Biographical Data on Henry Bernard Davis Kettlewell

1907 (24 February): Birth, Howden, Yorkshire
1920-23: Educated at Charterhouse

1926: Went to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to read medicine (with zoology)
1929: Began clinical training at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London

1935: Joined a general medical practice in Cranleigh, Surrey. Subsequently worked as an anesthetist at St. Luke's Hospital, Guildford

1939-45: Emergency Medical Service, Woking War Hospital
1949: Emigrated to South Africa
1949-54: Carried out research at the International Locust Control Centre at the University of Cape Town. Undertook several expeditions to the Kalahari, the Knysna Forest, the Belgian Congo, and Mozambique

1952: Appointed to Nuffield Research Fellowship in the Department of Genetics, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. Divided time between South Africa and Oxford
1954: Senior Research Officer in the Department of Genetics, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. Settled in Oxford

1958: Expedition to Brazil to mark the centennial of Darwin's Origin of Species.

1959: Darwin Medal (USSR)
1965: Mendel Medal (Czechoslovakia)
1965: Official Fellow of Iffley College (which becomes Wolfson College in 1966)
1974: Retired. Elected Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College
1979: Died from an accidental overdose


In Who's Who he listed his recreations as: shooting, salmon fishing, devising lobster traps, gardening (growing hybrid beans and azaleas).

Reviews of Kettlewell's contribution to science:

Ford, E.B. 1975. Ecological Genetics. 4th ed. London: Chapman and Hall
Turner, John R.G. 1990. In Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 17, Supplement II: 469-471. New York: Scribner's.