Cresswell Shearer
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Cresswell Shearer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 24 May 1874 |
| Died | 6 February 1941 (aged 66) |
| Alma mater | Johns Hopkins University, McGill University |
| Family | Norma Shearer (actress) |
| Awards | Fellow of the Royal Society[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge, McGill University, Johns Hopkins University, Stazione Zoologica |
Cresswell Shearer, FRS[1] (24 May 1874 – 6 February 1941), was a Canadian-British zoologist[2] and University of Cambridge lecturer in experimental embryology.
At Cambridge, he motivated his students to develop a keen interest in hands-on research, inviting them to practical marine-research experience at the Plymouth Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom during the summer months. It is also where Shearer and Dorothy Jordan Lloyd worked as early pioneers on how to rear parthenogenetic sea-urchin larvae through metamorphosis. He also conducted research there with Harold Munro Fox and Walter de Morgan on the genetics of sea-urchin hybrids.
During World War I (1914–1918), Shearer returned to medicine, working at Davenport Military Hospital in Plymouth. Due to an outbreak of cerebrospinal fever amongst the troops, he improved cultivation methods to study meningococcus, a bacterium involved in some forms of meningitis and cerebrospinal infection.
He pursued lifelong interests in both photography and Italian architecture, publishing The Renaissance of Architecture in Southern Italy in 1935. Shearer's architectural photographs contribute to the Conway Library archive at London's Courtauld Institute of Art; the photograps which are being digitised as part of the Courtauld Connects project.[3]
Initially taking courses in zoology and biology at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland (U.S.), Shearer returned to Quebec to graduate with a medical degree from McGill University in 1901.[4]
Academic career
Shearer's career as a zoologist began in the biological laboratory at McGill the same year he graduated, working in close association with Ernest MacBride.
Between 1903 and 1909, he developed his interest in experimental embryology at Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, a research institute in Naples, Italy.
He settled in Cambridge, lecturing in experimental embryology between 1910 and 1914. At the outbreak of World War I, Shearer was already in Plymouth so returned to medicine to help troops at Davenport military hospital. It was here he discovered importance of nasal secretion and vitamin supply to improve cultivation of meningococcus samples.
On his return to Cambridge at the end of the war,[5] he transferred from the Zoology to the Department of Anatomy where embryology was a relatively new subject to lecture in.[6] After his retirement from this post in 1937, he returned to the Zoology Department to conduct further research.
Awards
Family
Cresswell Shearer met his wife while working as a medic during World War I in Plymouth and had two sons.
Actress Norma Shearer was his niece.