Robert Beresford Seymour Sewell, 1880-1964

Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Beresford Seymour Sewell, C.I.E., F. R. S., died in Cambridge on 11 February 1964, at the age of 83. He was almost the last of a great generation of British zoologists who, brought up wholly in the grand nineteenth century tradition of evolutionary biology, saw and had to adapt themselves to the great change of outlook which began to overtake zoologists in the first decades of this century and which still continues. He was born in Leamington on 5 March 1880, the second son of the Reverend Arthur Sewell and of Mary Lee Waring, whose father Henry Franks Waring was a practising solicitor in Lyme Regis. Though born in Warwickshire, Seymour Sewell came of one of those Wessex families which have maintained and still maintain a steady distinction through the generations. Longevity also ran in the family. His great-great-grandfather William was made Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1753 and took the College living of Headly, Hants, in 1765. He lived to the age of 80. His son William (1804-1897) was Fellow of Exeter College and held the degree of D.D. He was a joint founder of St Columba’s College near Dublin, and founder of St Peter’s College, Radley. The second son James Edwards (1810-1903) was Fellow of New College, Oxford, and in 1860 became Warden and held that office till his death. Their sister Elizabeth Missing Sewell (1815-1907) was a distinguished authoress and pioneer of education for girls. Seymour Sewell’s father was at Radley and New College, where he was a choral scholar. He became Chaplain to the Order of St John of Jerusalem, and died at the age of 106.