introducing modern biology education

First UK edition of this uncommon evolutionary biology textbook, published in the same year as the US edition. Handsomely bound in diced calf for Harrow School.

Benjamin Gruenberg was born in 1875 in what is now Novoselytsia, Ukraine, and after emigrating to the United States he earned his PhD at Columbia University under genetics pioneer Thomas Hunt Morgan. Gruenberg worked as a teacher in New York City schools from 1902 onwards and was largely responsible for introducing the study of modern evolutionary biology and genetics, as opposed to descriptive natural history, into the education system. His prominence was so great that he was asked by Clarence Darrow to testify at the Scopes trial, but was advised to refuse by his publisher. He was also a proponent of modern sex education, writing a number of books on both subjects. After his death in 1965 the journal Science Education eulogised him thus: 'Few, if any science educators have had a greater impact on science education. He may aptly be described as a giant among American science teachers' (Pruitt, Benjamin Charles Gruenberg 1875-1965, Science Education, February 1966).

First UK edition; 8vo (20.5 x 145 cm); frontispiece and 12 plates, contents fresh; contemporary Harrow prize binding of diced purple calf, spine elaborately gilt in compartments, purple cloth sides, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, prize bookplate, spine slightly faded, a very good copy; 473pp.