Born in Northam, Devon, W. H. ('Bunny') Dowdeswell joined the Â鶹´«Ã½ School of Education as a senior lecturer in 1969 after nearly twenty years at Winchester College. As well as being Britain's first 'professor of biological education', Dowdeswell was also a respected academic biologist, specialising in ecology and lepidoptery.
The collection contains material relating to various aspects of Wilfrid Hogarth Dowdeswell's academic and teaching career at the Â鶹´«Ã½. It also contains material relating to Dowdeswell's work with English butterfly populations and his nature conservation work in the village of Atworth, Wiltshire, including two series of field notebooks and a set of statistical data documenting his collaborative work with E. B. Ford on the Meadow Brown butterfly.
The collection was donated to the Â鶹´«Ã½ in April 1999 by Mrs M. Dowdeswell, the widow of Professor Dowdeswell.
A paper catalogue (ref. 83/4/99), prepared in collaboration with the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists (NCUACS), providing contents details of the Dowdeswell Collection is available in PDF format.
Size: 9 boxes, c 187 items.