D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
Thompson argued that the forms of living things can be read as the results of physical forces and described with mathematics. His book On Growth and Form opens under an epigraph that looks to mechanics as the key to natural enigmas1. Later bioelectricity authors cite him for geometrical descriptions of body form and for the role of physical forces567.
- Born
- 2 May 1860
- Died
- 21 June 1948
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Field
- mathematician, biologist, zoologist
- In the library
- 1 work, named in 12 passages elsewhere
- Facts from
- Wikidata · Wikipedia · Open Library
Soap films and living cells
In On Growth and Form, Thompson compared organisms with the shapes that liquid surfaces take under tension. He noted that many Infusoria are unduloids or parts of unduloids, and that this surface type recurs in many forms2. The cups of Vorticella, he argued, match the unduloids made when an oil globule is held between two unequal rings or a soap bubble is blown between two unequal pipes3. The living cell's attachment points play the part of the rings or pipes.
Cell division and pressure
Thompson also applied the same approach to cleavage. He compared drawn stages of segmenting eggs and plant apices with diagrams of cell arrangements, which he sorted into types. A sea-urchin egg segmenting under pressure, as figured by Driesch, needed scarcely any change to resemble his diagram of type d4.
Use by later authors
Tyler (2017) credits Thompson with showing that body form can be described by a set of geometrical co-ordinates5. Tyler adds that Thompson saw a general law of growth and a system of forces at work in body structure6. Tyler then suggests that such co-ordinates could be provided by three-dimensional voltage gradients. Pai and colleagues (2020) cite Thompson for physical forces in brain development, alongside gene networks and bioelectric signals7.
when Theoretical Mechanics shall be recognised as the key to every physical enigma, the chart for every traveller through the dark Infinite of Nature.
Thompson, D. A. W., 1992 · On Growth and Form · open at passage 4A very large number of Infusoria represent unduloids, or portions of unduloids, and this type of surface appears and reappears in a great variety of forms.
Thompson, D. A. W., 1992 · On Growth and Form · open at passage 569These unduloids are not completely symmetrical, but they are such unduloids as develop themselves when we suspend an oil-globule between two unequal rings, or blow a soap-bubble between two unequal pipes
Thompson, D. A. W., 1992 · On Growth and Form · open at passage 569A sea-urchin egg, segmenting under pressure, as figured by Driesch, scarcely requires any modification of the drawing to appear as a diagram of the type d.
Thompson, D. A. W., 1992 · On Growth and Form · open at passage 854D'Arcy Thompson showed how body form can be described in terms of a set of geometrical co-ordinates.
Tyler SEB, 2017 · Nature's Electric Potential: A Systematic Review of the Role of Bioelectricity… · open at passage 9Thompson recognized that a comprehensive “law of growth” pervaded the whole body structure, in which a recognizable system of forces was at work
Tyler SEB, 2017 · Nature's Electric Potential: A Systematic Review of the Role of Bioelectricity… · open at passage 9Physical forces (Thompson, 1942; Stanger, 2008), gene regulatory networks (Zhao et al., 2011), and bioelectric signals (Pai et al., 2015a,b; Smith et al., 2018) regulate this complex process.
Pai VP, Cervera J, Mafe S, Willocq V, Lederer EK, Levin M, 2020 · HCN2 Channel-Induced Rescue of Brain Teratogenesis via Local and Long-Range… · open at passage 2
