D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948) was a Scottish biologist, classical scholar and mathematician, the son of a professor of Greek, who taught natural history at Dundee and then at St Andrews for a combined sixty-four years. He translated Aristotle's History of Animals, wrote glossaries of Greek birds and fishes, and served on international fisheries commissions. His masterpiece, On Growth and Form, published in 1917, explained the shapes of living things through the laws of physics and geometry, and influenced architects, artists and mathematicians as much as biologists. He was knighted in 1937 and remained a famous figure in St Andrews, walking the streets with a parrot on his shoulder.