Wednesday 12 February 2014

Book on loan for exhibition at Two Temple Place





The Balfour Library has loaned their copy of Reginald Crundall Punnett's Mimicry in butterflies, 1915, for exhibition at Two Temple Place in London.

Reginald Punnett was a Cambridge geneticist, who in collaboration with William Bateson, founded the Journal of Genetics in 1910.  Punnett is probably best remembered today as the creator of the Punnett square, a tool still used by biologists to predict the probability of possible genotypes of offspring. Find about more about the author and his book here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Punnett  

The exhibition 'Discoveries: Art, Science & Exploration' displays treasures from the University of Cambridge Museums, a consortium of the eight University Museums, which works in partnership with the Cambridge University Botanic Garden and other Cambridge University collections. Items on display in the exhibition include a collection of snow goggles from the Polar Museum (one pair belonged to Captain Robert Falcon Scott), Japanese prints from the Fitzwilliam Museum and the egg of a Tinamou bird collected by Charles Darwin during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle from the Museum of Zoology.

The book is open at plate IV depicting Oriental butterflies and is displayed with the actual tray of butterflies from the Museum of Zoology that Punnett used to draw the illustration.

Two Temple Place is one of London's hidden architectural gems, an extraordinary late Victorian mansion built by William Waldorf Astor on Embankment. The exhibition runs from 31 January to 27 April 2014. Find out more about the exhibition here: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/discoveries/