D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum

About

The D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum is a museum of zoology at the University of Dundee in Scotland. The museum is named after the Scottish biologist and mathematician D'Arcy Thompson (1860–1948), who founded it in the 1880s. Thompson began acquiring specimens for a museum immediately on taking up the post of Professor of Biology at what was then University College, Dundee in 1885.

An extension to his department in 1893 allowed the creation of a purpose-built museum, which grew to become one of the largest museums of its kind in Britain at the time. The original museum building was demolished along with its neighbours in 1956–57 to make way for the Tower Building, and much of Thompson's original collection was dispersed. The remaining material was kept in storage for many years before new museum displays were created in the Biological Sciences Institute in the 1980s.

This building was itself later demolished, and in 2007 a new museum was created in the Carnelley Building, formally named the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum after its founder. The museum has a collection of birds, fish, insects, mammals, and reptiles from around the world, together with many of D'Arcy Thompson's original...