(1882-1951)
Wilfred
Agar came to the University of Melbourne in 1919, having participated
in the Gallipoli campaign in the Highland Light Infantry. He had served
a year as adjutant to the divisional base at Alexandria before being
invalided home to England.
Before the war, he read Zoology at Cambridge, then combined a post
as demonstrator at the University of Glasgow with a Fellowship at King's
College. His convalescence between 1916 and 1918 allowed him to write
Cytology, published in 1920. In 1921 he was elected to the Royal Society.
Agar succeeded Baldwin Spencer as Professor of Zoology and introduced
the disciplines of cytology and genetics to Melbourne students.
Despite initial apprehensions, Agar refused overseas posts and noted
on his retirement that he had been able to achieve as much in Melbourne
as he might have done in Britain.
Notable projects concerned marsupial chromosomes and inheritance in
cattle. He successfully challenged the Lamarckian finding of William
Macdougall relating to the inheritance of the effects of training in
rats. The breadth of Agar's scientific interests (which included a longstanding
interest in animal psychology) is illustrated in A Contribution to the
Theory of the Living Organism, published in 1943 with a second edition
in 1961, which he rated his most important contribution to biological
theory.
Agar was prominent in University administration as Council member,
Dean of the Faculty of Science and Chairman of the Professorial Board
which oversaw the appointment of Raymond Priestley as the first full-time
Vice-Chancellor. He was President of the Royal Society of Victoria in
1927-28 and on its council for 20 years.
The Agar family lived on Professors Walk in the University grounds
until 1948 and Peter MacCallum's daughter Monica recalls that, on the
death of their mother, Mrs Agar stood almost in loco parentis to the
MacCallum children living in a house on Tin Alley.
