Lancelot Hogben

**Lancelot Thomas Hogben** FRS FRSE (9 December 1895 – 22 August 1975) was a British experimental zoologist and medical statistician. He developed the African clawed frog (_Xenopus laevis_) as a model organism for biological research in his early career. He also attacked the eugenics movement in the middle of his career, and wrote popular books on science, mathematics and language in his later career.

He created an international language, Interglossa, as 'a draft of an auxiliary for a democratic world order'.

### Early life and education

Hogben was born and grew up in Southsea, near Portsmouth in Hampshire. His parents were Methodists. In 1907, his family moved to Stoke Newington in London, where his mother had grown up. He went to Tottenham County School and later studied physiology as a medical student at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Before going to Cambridge, Hogben enrolled as an external student at the University of London and earned a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in 1914. He got his degree from Cambridge in 1915, finishing with a basic (Ordinary) Bachelor of Arts (BA). During this time, he became a socialist. He changed the name of the university’s Fabian Society to the Socialist Society and joined the Independent Labour Party. Later in life, he called himself a "scientific humanist."

### World War I

During the First World War, Hogben was a pacifist (against war) and joined the Quakers. He worked for six months in France with the Red Cross, helping people affected by the war as part of the Friends’ War Victims Relief Service and the Friends’ Ambulance Unit. After returning to Cambridge, he was jailed in 1916 at Wormwood Scrubs because he refused to fight in the war (as a conscientious objector). His health got worse in prison, so he was released in 1917. His brother George was also a conscientious objector and worked with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit.

### Personal life

In 1918, Hogben married Enid Charles, who was a mathematician, statistician, socialist, and feminist from Denbigh. They had two sons and two daughters together. Hogben also learned to speak Welsh.

In the 1950s, he moved to Glyn Ceiriog in North Wales and bought a small cottage. During that time, his marriage with Enid ended. They separated in 1953 and got divorced in 1957. Later that same year, he married Jane Roberts (born Evans), a local retired school headmistress who was seven years younger than him.

Jane passed away in 1974, and Hogben died the following year, in 1975, at the War Memorial Hospital in Wrexham. He was 79 years old and was cremated at Pentre Bychan nearby. Hogben was an atheist and called himself a "scientific humanist."

## Books he published

- _A Short Life of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)_, p. 64 (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1918)
- _Exiles of the Snow, and Other Poems_ (1918)
- _An Introduction to Recent Advances in Comparative Physiology_ (1924) with Frank R. Winton
- _ The Pigmentary Effector System. A review of the physiology of colour response_ (1924)
- _Comparative Physiology_ (1926)
- _Comparative Physiology of Internal Secretion_ (1927)
- _The Nature of Living Matter_ (1930)
- _Genetic Principles in Medical and Social Science_ (1931)
- _Nature or Nurture - The William Withering Lectures for 1933_ (1933)
- _Mathematics for the Million: A Popular Self-Educator_ (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1936), illustrated by Frank Horrabin, Primers for the Age of Plenty - No. 1. Re-issued in the United States by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (1937).
- _The Retreat from Reason_ (1936) Conway Memorial Lecture 20 May 1936, chaired by Julian Huxley.
- _Science for the Citizen: A Self-Educator Based on the Social Background of Scientific Discovery_ (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1938), illustrated by Frank Horrabin, Primers for the Age of Plenty - No. 2.
- _Political Arithmetic: A Symposium of Population Studies_ (1938) editor
- _Dangerous Thoughts_ (1939)
- _Author in Transit_ (1940)
- _Principles of Animal Biology_ (1940)
- _Interglossa: A Draft of an Auxiliary for a Democratic world order, Being an Attempt to Apply Semantic Principles to Language Design_ (1943)
- _The Loom of Language: A Guide To Foreign Languages For The Home Student_ by Frederick Bodmer (1944), edited by Hogben, Primers for the Age of Plenty - No. 3.
- _An Introduction to Mathematical Genetics_ (1946)
- _History of the Homeland: The Story of the British Background_ by Henry Hamilton (1947), edited by Hogben, Primers for the Age of Plenty - No. 4.
- _The New Authoritarianism_ (1949) Conway Memorial Lecture 1949
- _From Cave Painting To Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope of Human Communication_ (1949)
- _Chance and Choice by Cardpack and Chessboard_ (1950)
- _Man Must Measure: The Wonderful World of Mathematics_ (1955)
- _Statistical theory. The relationship of probability, credibility and error. An examination of the contemporary crisis in statistical theory from a behaviorist viewpoint_ (1957)
- _The Wonderful World Of Energy_ (1957)
- _The Signs of Civilisation_ (1959)
- _The Wonderful World of Communication_ (1959)
- _Mathematics in the Making_ (1960)
- _Essential World English_ (1963) with Jane Hogben and Maureen Cartwright
- _Science in Authority: Essays_ (1963)
- _The Mother Tongue_ (1964)
- _Whales for the Welsh — A Tale of War and Peace with Notes for those who Teach or Preach_ (1967)
- _Beginnings and Blunders or Before Science Began_ (1970)
- _The Vocabulary Of Science_ (1970) with Maureen Cartwright
- _Astronomer Priest and Ancient Mariner_ (1972)
- _ Maps, Mirrors and Mechanics_ (1973)
- _Columbus, the Cannon Ball and the Common Pump_ (1974)
- _How The World Was Explored_, editor, with Marie Neurath and Joseph Albert Lauwerys
- Hogben, Anne; Hogben, Lancelot Thomas; Hogben, Adrian. _Lancelot Hogben: scientific humanist: an unauthorised autobiography_ (1998)

## Related pages

- Leslie Hogben, granddaughter of Lancelot

## Further reading

- Erlingsson, Steindór J., "The Early History of the SEB and the BJEB." _Society For Experimental Biology Bulletin_, March, pp. 10–11, 2006. The article can be accessed here

## Other websites

- Lancelot Hogben biography at the Galton Institute
- _Scientific Humanism_, in _Time Magazine_ (11 March 1940)
- Max Perutz on Lancelot Hogben and his autobiography in Times Higher Education (31 July 1998)
- Details of research on Xenopus
- Royal Society certificate of election
- Royal Society photograph
- First part of Interglossa (there is a photograph of the author on p. 2.)
- Brief excerpts from Interglossa
- Full text and diagrams from Interglossa
- Scientists' Nightstand: David Mumford - a tribute to _Mathematics for the Million_ from Fields Medallist David Mumford
- Correspondence of Sir R.A. Fisher: Calendar of Correspondence with Lancelot Hogben

## Infobox (person)

- **name**: Lancelot Thomas Hogben
- **birth place**: Portsmouth, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- **death place**: Wrexham, Wales, United Kingdom
- **occupation**: experimental zoologist, medical statistician
- **alma mater**: Trinity College, Cambridge