Arthur Willey

{{short description|Director of Colombo Museum, Ceylon}}

{{for|the English solicitor, politician and racehorse owner|Arthur Wellesley Willey}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

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Arthur Willey FRS (9 October 1867, Scarborough, North Yorkshire – 26 December 1942) was a British-Canadian zoologist.{{cite journal|author=Gardiner, J. S.|title=Obituary. Prof. Arthur Willey, F.R.S|date=30 January 1943|journal=Nature|volume=151|issue=3822|pages=130–131|doi=10.1038/151130a0|doi-access=free}}

After education at Kingswood School, Bath, he matriculated in 1887 at University College London and graduated there with B.Sc. in 1890.

{{blockquote|During the long vacation of 1889 and again in the following year he proceeded to Messina at the instance of Lankester and there carried out the investigations of Amphioxus which formed the subject matter of his first published papers. In 1891 he spent some months at Freiburg under Weismann and later on spent a year at the Marine Stations of Plymouth and Naples, working chiefly on the development of the Ascidians.{{cite journal|author=Kerr, John Graham|authorlink=John Graham Kerr|title=Arthur Willey 1867–1902|journal=Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society|date=1 November 1943|volume=4|issue=12|pages=394–410|jstor=769048|doi=10.1098/rsbm.1943.0011|s2cid=177453875 |doi-access=free}}}}

After returning from the Marine Station (Stazione Zoologica), Naples, he became a fellow at University College London. From 1892 to 1894 he was a biological tutor at Columbia University. From 1894 to 1899 he held the Balfour Studentship of Cambridge, during which he went to the East Indies to investigate the embryology of the pearly nautilus. From 1899 to 1901 he was a lecturer in biology at Guy's Hospital. In 1902 he was elected F.R.S. From 1902 to 1909 he was the director of the Colombo Museum and the editor of Spolia Zeylanica.[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100684895 Spolia zeylanica, hathitrust.org] In 1907 he was a marine biologist for the Ceylon Government. In 1910 he became the Strathcona Professor at McGill University in Montreal{{cite journal|title=Willey, Arthur|journal=Who's Who|year=1916|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3453981;view=1up;seq=2415|page= 2374}} and retired there as professor emeritus in 1932. In 1902 in Hendon, Middlesex, he married Emily Constance Bowd, and after his retirement in 1932 they lived in a cottage about an hour's drive from Montreal.