Guy Coburn Robson

Guy Coburn Robson (11 Feb 1888–17 May 1945) was a British zoologist, specializing in Mollusca, who first named and described Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, the colossal squid among many other species .

Career Guy graduated from Oxford University in 1910 (age 22) and started employment with the British Museum of Natural History (Natural History Museum) later that year (officially from 1911). Soon after gaining employment with the museum, he spent 5 months at the marine biological station in Naples on an Oxford University Biological Scholarship, before returning to the British Museum of Natural History. His more notable contributions being the description of the Colossal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) in 1925, description of the octopus genus Grimpella in 1928, and his two part monograph on the Cephalopoda (part 1 in 1929, and part 2 in 1932), which included descriptions and re-descriptions of many species as well as new genera (e.g., Grimpoteuthis and Teretoctopus). The book claims that most differences among animal populations and related species are non-adaptive. It was published before major developments in the modern synthesis and contains critical evaluation of natural selection. It was positively reviewed in science journals in the 1930s. Zoologist Mark Ridley has noted that "Robson and Richards suggested that the differences between species are non-adaptive and have nothing to do with natural selection."

Historian Will Provine has commented that the book "has been in disrepute since the late 1940s because of its antagonism to natural selection" but notes that it was the "best known general work on animal taxonomy" before the work of Julian Huxley and Ernst Mayr. Huxley in Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942), described the book as "an undue belittling of the role of selection in evolution."

Eponymy The following marine species have been named after Guy Robson to honour his contribution to science:

Abralia robsoni Grimpe, 1931 genus Robsonella W. Adam, 1938 Onykia robsoni (Adam, 1962) Amphioctopus robsoni (Adam, 1941) Opisthoteuthis robsoni O'Shea, 1999 Uroteuthis (Photololigo) robsoni (Alexeyev, 1992) Digitosepia robsoni (Massy, 1927)

Select Publications

Guide to the Mollusca exhibited in the Zoological Department, British Museum (1923) The Species Problem (1926) A Monograph of the Recent Cephalopoda. Based on the collections in the British Museum, Natural History (two volumes, 1929–1932) The Variation of Animals in Nature (with O. W. Richards) (1936)

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