Walter Garstang

Who was Walter Garstang?

Walter Garstang FLS FZS, a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford and Professor of Zoology at the University of Leeds, was one of the first to study the functional biology of marine invertebrate larvae. His best known works on marine larvae were his poems which were published together after his death as Larval Forms and Other Zoological Verses, which describe the form and function of several marine larvae as well as illustrating some controversies in evolutionary biology of the time.

Garstang was known for his vehement opposition to Ernst Haeckel's Biogenetic Law, now discredited. He is also noted for his hypothesis on chordate evolution, known as Garstang's theory, which suggests an alternative route for chordate evolution from echinoderms. Holland, in Walter Garstang: a Retrospective summarizes Garstang’s more important publications with special attention to his evolutionary thoughts—their source, their relation to the biology of his times, and their fate in the twenty-first century.