Editing Francis Maitland Balfour (section)

== Career ==
A course of lectures on [[embryology]], delivered by Sir [[Michael Foster (physiologist)|Michael Foster]] in 1871, turned Balfour's attention to [[animal morphology]].  After the tripos, he was selected to occupy one of the two seats allocated to the [[University of Cambridge]] at the [[Naples]] zoological station. The research work which he began there contributed in an important degree to his election as a Fellow of Trinity in 1874; and also gave him the material for a series of papers (published as a monograph in 1878) on the [[Elasmobranch]] fish, which threw new light on the development of several organs in the [[Vertebrate]]s, in particular of the uro-genital and nervous systems.

His next work was a large treatise, ''Comparative Embryology'',<ref>{{cite book|last1=Balfour|first1=Francis M.|title=A treatise on comparative embryology|url=https://archive.org/details/atreatiseoncomp04balfgoog|date=1880|publisher=Macmillan|location=London|edition=1st}}</ref> in two volumes; the first, published in 1880, dealing with the [[Invertebrate]]s, and the second (1881) with the [[Vertebrate]]s. This book displayed a vigorous scientific imagination, controlled by a logical sense that rigidly distinguished between fact and hypothesis, and it quickly won wide recognition, both as an admirable digest of the numberless observations made with regard to the development of animals during the quarter of a century preceding its publication, and as a work of original research.

Balfour's reputation was now such that other universities became anxious to secure his services, and he was invited to succeed Professor [[George Rolleston]] at [[Oxford]] and Sir [[Wyville Thomson]] at [[Edinburgh]]. Although he was only a college lecturer, holding no official post in his university, he declined to leave Cambridge, and in the spring of 1882 the university instituted a special Chair of Animal [[Morphology (biology)|Morphology]] for his benefit.

He was a committed [[Darwinism|Darwinian]], though he disagreed with Darwin on the origins of larvae. Darwin assumed that larvae arose from the same stock as adults, but Balfour believed that virtually all larvae are 'secondary', i.e., they "have become introduced into the ontogeny of species, the young of which were originally hatched with all the characters of the adult".<ref>''Comparative Embryology'', Vol 2, p. 300.</ref> In the case of echinoderms, he argued that the bilateral larvae must have been introduced after the establishment of the existing classes, and he challenged [[Ernst Haeckel]]'s view that these larvae are evidence that echinoderms evolved from bilateral ancestors.

In June 1878 Balfour was elected a [[Fellow of the Royal Society]],<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www2.royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=1&dsqSearch=%28Surname%3D%27balfour%27%29| title = Library and Archive Catalogue| publisher = Royal Society| access-date = 8 December 2010}}{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> and in 1881 was awarded their [[Royal Medal]] ''"For his numerous and important contributions to animal morphology; and more especially for his investigations respecting the origin of the urogenital organs and the cerebrospinal nerves of the Vertebrata; and for his work on the development of the Elasmobranch fishes."''

At the time of his death, he was a professor of animal morphology at the University of Cambridge.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Campello |first=Daniele |date=2021-09-10 |title=Francis Maitland Balfour (1851-1882) – Zoology |url=https://bio.lib.cam.ac.uk/zoology-library/special-collections/francis-maitland-balfour-1851-1882-zoology |access-date=2024-02-03 |website=bio.lib.cam.ac.uk}}</ref>