Helen Spurway

Helen Spurway (12 June 1915 – 15 February 1978) was a British biologist and the second wife of J. B. S. Haldane. She emigrated to India in 1957 along with him and conducted research in field biology with Krishna Dronamraju, Suresh Jayakar, and others. Sometimes known as Helen Spurway-Haldane. Life and career Spurway was born in 1915 in the London borough of Wandsworth, the daughter of Frank Spurway and Kate Lea, who were employees of the Post Office, as a telegraphist and a telegraphist and postal clerk. She had an unimpeachable proletarian background (cf. Haldane who was clearly patrician). She obtained her Ph.D. in genetics in 1938 at University College London under the supervision of Haldane, whom she met as an undergraduate and married in 1945. Her early research was in the genetics of Drosophila subobscura, but later switched to the reproductive biology of the guppy, Lebistes reticulatus. Her claim, in 1955, that parthenogenesis, which occurs in the guppy in nature, may also occur (though very rarely) in the human species, leading to so-called "virgin births" created some sensation among her colleagues and the lay public alike.