Biography

Emma Nora Darwin was born in Cambridge on 22 December 1885, the third child and youngest daughter of Horace Darwin (1851–1928), civil engineer and manufacturer of scientific instruments, and his wife, Emma Cecilia (Ida) (1854-1946), daughter of Thomas Henry Farrer, first Baron Farrer. A granddaughter of the British naturalist Charles Darwin, Nora, as she was known, was educated at Levana School, a small private school in Wimbledon, from March 1902 to [March/April] 1904 before studying botany at Cambridge under the plant physiologist, Frederick Frost Blackman (1866–1947) and continuing her studies in the new field of genetics under William Bateson (1861-1926). Her primary research focus when working with Bateson was the crossing of trimorphic forms, such as plants of the genus Oxalis. Nora was an active member of the Cambridge University Genetics Society and subsequently followed Bateson to the newly formed John Innes Horticultural Institute in Merton, south-west London where she continued to work for a time in plant genetics. Following her marriage in 1911 and even after the birth of her six children (1912–1921), Nora continued to study the genetics of trimorphic species, visiting the John Innes Institute each summer until Bateson’s death in 1926 to examine the flowers that were grown for her there, and publishing the results of her work in 1913 and 1923. She was among the founders of the Genetical Society in 1919 and attended its meetings regularly. On 6 April 1911, Nora married the civil servant (James) Alan Noel Barlow (1881-1968), son of the Royal Physician, Sir Thomas Barlow and became Lady Barlow after her husband was knighted in 1938. They had six children: Joan Helen (26 May 1912), Thomas Erasmus (23 January 1914), Erasmus Darwin (15 April 1915), Andrew Dalmahoy (16 September 1916), Hilda Horatia (14 September 1919) and Horace Basil (8 December 1921). In 1933, Nora edited and published the first in a series of previously unseen examples of her grandfather’s work. These included ‘Charles Darwin’s Diary of the Voyage of HMS Beagle' (1933); ‘Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle’ (1946) - a collection of letters and notebooks from the voyage; ‘The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882’ (1958) - an unexpurgated version which had previously had personal and religious material removed by his son, Francis; ‘Darwin’s Ornithological Notes’ (1963) and ‘Darwin and Henslow: The Growth of an Idea’ (1967) – a collection of letters from 1831 to 1860. Nora Barlow died on 29 May 1989.

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