Henry Paul William Lyster Jameson (1875, Louth – 26 February 1922, West Mersea) was a zoologist, who studied pearl-formation.[1] He also made contributions to speleology and encouraged the study of psychology in adult education.
Henry Lyster Jameson
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| Died | 26 February 1922 |
| Alma mater | Trinity College Dublinn Heidelberg University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Zoology |
H. Lyster Jameson was born in Louth the son of Paul Lyster Jameson,[2] the rector of Killincoole. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin. In 1895 he explored the Marble Arch Caves with Édouard-Alfred Martel,[3] and was the first to describe fauna in the Mitchelstown Cave.[4]
After a year at the Royal College of ScienceinLondon, Jameson studied zoology under Otto Bütschli at the University of Heidelberg, writing his dissertation (1898) on Thalassema neptuni, a species of spoon worms. Put in charge of a pearling station in British New Guinea, he studied the causes of pearl-formation. He continued this research at the Lancashire Sea Fisheries Station in Piel Island, Barrow-in-Furness, developing the parasitic theory of pearl-formation in the common sea mussel.
After developing pulmonary tuberculosis, he went to South Africa in 1902. Here he married Millicent Lucy Parker at Krugersdorp.[5] He worked for the Natal Education Department and later was professor of Biology the Transvaal Technical InstituteinJohannesburg.[1] However when the Institute – renamed the Transvaal University College – was reorganised in 1908, Jameson's post was abolished and he returned to England.
Back in England from 1914 he was employed as a civil servant for Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. He quickly set up the Fisheries Experimental Station at West Mersea.[2]
Jameson became a Marxist and joined the Plebs' League, with whom he made "strenuous attempts [...] to develop psychology" as a component of working-class education in the League.[6] He used the pen-name "Nordicus".[7] He wrote the first draft of An Outline of Psychology, an introductory psychology textbook published by them. The final text was produced in an attempt at "communal production"
This version went through eight editions before Eden and Cedar Paul, with Edward Conze produced a revised edition in 1938, by which time 18,000 copies had been produced.
He died of tuberculosis in 1922.