Denis G. Lillie
Denis Gascoigne Lillie[a] (27 August 1884 – 13 May 1963) was a British biologist who participated in the Terra Nova Expedition (1910–1913) to the Antarctic.
He was also a noted caricaturist who made cartoons of professors, colleagues, and friends: some of his caricatures are collected in the National Portrait Gallery.
He worked as a government bacteriologist during World War I and then suffered a severe mental breakdown, spending three years at Bethlem Royal Hospital and never fully recovering.
[9][10] At Cambridge, Lillie gained a reputation for caricatures of faculty members, including the geneticist William Bateson and the botanists Frederick Blackman and Arthur George Tansley.
These drawings caught the attention of Arthur Shipley, who collected some of them which were eventually deposited into the National Portrait Gallery in London.
[2] Around 1909, Lillie was recruited by Edward A. Wilson, chief scientist for the upcoming British Antarctic Expedition (1910–1913) led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott.
[2] Lillie was the biologist in charge of operations on board the Terra Nova, and collected marine samples by trawling, dredging, and tow-netting.
Captain Scott and assistant zoologist Apsley Cherry-Garrard both recalled Lillie was especially excited to find specimens of Cephalodiscus, a hemichordate that was rare at the time and whose ancestor was thought to be a link between vertebrates and invertebrates.
[20][21] Lillie was described by Cherry-Garrard's biographer Sara Wheeler as popular yet perhaps the most unconventional person on the expedition, deeply intellectual yet eccentric.
The Terra Nova, with Lillie aboard, departed from Lyttelton, New Zealand, for its return voyage on 13 May 1913, making more stops along the way to collect samples.
[22]: 201 Bethlem's normal twelve-month limit on residency was waived in consideration of donations to the hospital from the Captain Scott Memorial Fund.
[28] Lillie spent three years at Bethlem, being released in January 1921, and began lecturing at Cambridge before a relapse sent him to Buckinghamshire Mental Hospital in October.
