The Times/1906/Obituary/Walter Frank Raphael Weldon

Professor Walter Frank Raphael Weldon, F.R.S., who died suddenly in London on Friday last, was not the least distinguished member of the younger school of biologists. Born in 1860, he took a first-class in the Natural Science Tripos at Cambridge in 1881, and became a Fellow of St. John's in 1884. For several years he held the Chair of Comparitive Anatomy and Zoology at University College, London, resigning it in 1899 to become Linacre Professor of Comparitive Anatomy at Oxford. In 1900 he too the D.Sc. degree, and as Linacre Professor he held a fellowship at Merton. Professor Weldon was a constant attendant at the meetings of the British Association, on the general committee of which body he served as a vice-president of Section D, (zoology). In the proceedings of this section, Professor Weldon took an active part, and at the Cambridge meeting, in 1904, he was one of the protagonists of the sharp encounter that took place between the champions of the "Mendelian" and the "Ancestrian" theories of heredity. Mr. William Bateson, as president of the Section D. for the year, had devoted his address to a vindication of the Mendelian principles in regard to heredity and variation, and subsequent discussion on the same subject provoked from Professor Weldon and Professor Karl Pearson some rather severe criticism, to which Mr. Bateson replied. The debate, which was conducted before a large and somewhat agitated audience, resolved itself into a dialectical dual between the president of the section and Professor Weldon, and developed quite a considerable amount of heat.