Balfour Chair of Genetics at Cambridge 1943-1957
At Fleam Dyke, south of Cambridge, 1952.
With no unit or funding left at University College London, Fisher accepted election to the Balfour Chair of Genetics at Cambridge in 1943. There was no genetics department building. The laboratory was housed in a single room in the professorial residence, Whittingehame Lodge, at Storey’s Way, situated two miles out of Cambridge and surrounded by several acres of departmental land. Fisher was pleased to receive the recognition of his own university and during the remainder of the war set about laying the groundwork for development of the department of genetics.
However, at the end of the war plans for a new genetics department and livestock improvement programmes came to nothing. The greatest blow to Fisher was his failure to regain the Blood Group Unit. Fisher attempted to establish research into the new field of bacterial genetics and appointed the Italian geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli in 1948, but without university support Cavalli returned to Italy in 1950.
By 1950 Fisher realised he could not count on university support for any new or ambitious programmes in his department which was still housed in Whittingehame Lodge. His experimental studies on chromosome mapping in mice and polyploidy in Lythrum continued to be the primary research. The move from London deprived Fisher of the editorship of the Annals of Eugenics so in 1947 he founded and edited the journal Heredity jointly with C.D. Darling.
Fisher held in succession the two senior chairs of genetics in Great Britain, but such is his fame as a statistician that his contributions to genetics and evolutionary biology are not as recognised. However, Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker (1986) described Fisher as “the greatest of his [Darwin’s] successors.” He retired just four and a half years after the structure of DNA was revealed and genetics has now become a very different subject.
In 1952 Fisher was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, becoming Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, and in 1956 he became President of Gonville and Caius College.
On display:
- Photographs: At Fleam Dyke, south of Cambridge, 1952. Fisher with E.B. Ford; Father Walter Peters, Dr E.B. Ford, Fisher Fisher Papers. Series 25.2: Album of official functions … etc 1945-62
The Genetic Garden
‘In the garden at 44 Storey’s Way, Cambridge’
Whittingehame Lodge was noted for its gardens, which Fisher loved to walk in, and he worked with a gardener to bring his ideas to improve it to fruition. The garden included open pollination plot of Lythrum plants, an exhibition plot of garden peas showing Mendelian characters, experimental Oxalis plots and adjacent mouse rooms.
Whittingehame Lodge is now used as a graduate hostel.
On display:
- Undated typescript. ‘A Genetic Garden’ [proposal for creation of at Cambridge] / R.A. Fisher. Fisher Papers. Series 13
- Photograph: ‘In the garden at 44 Storey’s Way, Cambridge’ June 1955. Fisher Papers. Series 25.2: Album of official functions … etc 1945-62
Scientific Advances
When he moved to Cambridge, Fisher decided to create permanent inbred lines of all genes recognisable in mice in order to illustrate factor integration or linkages and to create standard genotypes in mice for use in human and veterinary medicine. This work led to his consideration of the theory of inbreeding and the book of the same title.
The Theory of Inbreeding was published in 1949. It provided a theoretical analysis of the mouse experiments Fisher had been conducting since his London days. It also contained a presentation of the theory of junctions.
On display:
- The Theory of Inbreeding. 1st edition (Oliver and Boyd, 1949)
Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference
Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference
Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference (1956) was Fisher’s last and most provocative book, in which he summarised and extended his ideas on the fundamental problems of inductive reasoning.
Fisher was profoundly unsympathetic to the mathematical statistics that Neyman and Wald were developing in the United States. This work criticised those developments and gave a theoretical defence of his principles underlying his approach to statistical inference, significance tests, likelihood and fiducial inference.
The final chapter was so compactly written that six lectures were needed in the graduate course in mathematics at Yale to spell out the gaps that Fisher had jumped through intuition.
On display:
- Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference. 1st edition (Oliver & Boyd, 1956)
Fisher and the Biometrics Society
“Biometry, the active pursuit of biological knowledge by quantitative methods.” R.A. Fisher. ‘Biometry’, Biometrics, September 1948.
The first congress of the Biometric Society was held at the beginning of September 1947 when 89 biologists, statisticians and mathematicians gathered at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the traditional summer resort of geneticists. Among the papers presented, Fisher spoke on ‘A Quantitative Theory of Genetic Recombination.’ A draft constitution for the Biometric Society was prepared and approved and Fisher was elected as the first President. In December 1948 the Biometric Society was formerly affiliated with the International Statistical Institute.
Fisher was a faithful attendant at Biometric conferences and pointed out that they took him to delightful parts of the world. He was not very conscientious in attending lectures but enjoyed sharing the local scene and the informal company of scientists.
Within the Biometrics Society, Fisher acted variously as President, enthusiast, tonic and father of careers in the making.
On display:
- Photographs: International Congress of Genetics and Biometry, Bellagio, 1953. Fisher on the beach with R.R. Race, Rose Fisher, Joan Fisher and M.S. Wallace. Fisher Papers. Series 25.2: Album of official functions … etc 1945-62
- Photographs: Fisher lecturing and at dinner in North Carolina, January 1958. Fisher Papers. Series 25.2: Album of official functions … etc 1945-62
- Photograph: Relaxed Fisher with pipe. At a Lake Junaluska Assembly of the Institute of Statistics of the University of North Carolina, 1956. Photograph by Mrs Horace Norton. Fisher Papers. Series 25.2: Album of official functions … etc 1945-62
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Retirement
Fisher was due to retire from Cambridge University in 1955 when the Senate voted to permit Professors to extend their tenure for two years.
The appointment of the new Professor of Genetics was delayed, and Fisher showed no interest in moving out of his residence, Whittingehame Lodge, which was almost entirely filled with mice. He was also concerned for the future of his beloved genetic garden which he had developed over many years.
In 1957 he was elected President of Gonville and Caius College.
Although he visited the United States and was Visiting Professor at Michigan State University over the 1957-58 semester, his occupation of the Lodge continued until Fisher departed for a trip to Australia in March 1959.
