Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson combined extensive knowledge of natural history with insight into mathematics to develop a new approach to evolution and the growth of living things. His 1917 work, On Growth and Form, represented a significant departure from the zoology of his day and has since contributed to embryology, taxonomy, paleontology, and ecology, as well as influencing artists, engineers, architects, and poets. Thompson was also trained in the classics from a young age, and he applied his knowledge of ancient Greek culture, thought, and natural history to his A Glossary of Greek Birds and A Glossary of Greek Fishes.

Thompson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 2, 1860. His father, also named D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, was a classical master at the Edinburgh Academy, and then a professor of Greek at Queens College, Galway. The elder Thompson wrote books expressing liberal ideas, and delivered the Lowell Institute Lectures in Boston...