British Museum (Natural History): Department of Zoology: Coelenterata Section: Research...

This series consists of those of Arthur Knyvett Totton's research files that he left at the Museum after his retirement, together with the scientific papers generated by William James Rees during his time in the Coelenterate Section.

Series held at The Natural History Museum are catalogued more fully in its online catalogue (reference DF ZOO/257). Online descriptions of some individual records can also be viewed on Discovery, see DF 257.

Arrangement of the class is chronological, with undated material at the end.

Rees' Mollusca Section papers are held in the Section Library, and there are papers from his time at Plymouth in the Zoology Library manuscripts. The artwork for a number of his publications is in the Zoology Library drawings collection. The bulk of Totton's research papers are in DF 5009

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William James Rees (1913-1967) was educated at St David's College School, Lampeter, and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He worked on hydroids and their medusae at the Marine Biological Association laboratory in Plymouth from 1936 to 1940, and with RAF intelligence during the War. He joined the Mollusca Section of the Museum in 1946, and transferred to Coelenterates on Totton's retirement in 1953. His first project, which was never published in full, was a monographic study of the gymnoblastic hydroids of the British Isles. He developed a new, unified, classification of hydroids and medusae, and worked on a general revision of British hydroid genera. He also studied the hydroids of Scandinavia, Singapore, the Azores, Zanzibar, the Bay of Naples and elsewhere, and paid a number of visits to Norway, Sweden, Naples, Villefranche and Miami. He died suddenly in October 1967.