Background
George Parker Bidder III was born on 21 May 1863 in London, to barrister George Parker Bidder II (1836–1896) and Anna McClean (1839–1910).
George Parker Bidder III was born on 21 May 1863 in London, to barrister George Parker Bidder II (1836–1896) and Anna McClean (1839–1910).
He was the President of the Marine Biological Association (Master of Business Administration) from 1939 to 1945. He then studied zoology at University College London under Ray Lankester for one year before joining Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took the Natural Sciences Tripos until 1886. He joined the Master of Business Administration in 1893, becoming a member of the council (its governing body) in 1899.
Bidder went to King’s Preparatory School in Brighton and Harrow School. In 1887 he began working at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy. They had two daughters.
One, Anna McClean Bidder (1903-2001), was a zoologist and academic.
During the 1910s, Bidder suffered tuberculosis, which made him unable to work at the laboratory or take part in the First World War. In 1925, Bidder founded The Company of Biologists to save The British Journal of Experimental Biology from bankruptcy.
Bidder died on 31 December 1954 in Cambridge. Bidder"s research focused on sponges, especially their hydraulics.
He also studied the movements bottom feeders, as well as marine geology, in particular coastal erosion.
In 1932, Bidder made a major contribution to the field of biogerontology by proposing that senescence was the effect of a "regulator" responsible for ending growth. This theory, known as "Bidder"s hypothesis" has been refuted in numerous experiments, starting with Alex Comfort"s 1963 study on guppy, a species that ages while growing. Nonetheless, Bidder"s hypothesis might be true for some species as a "private" mechanism of ageing.
Between 1904 and 1906 Bidder conducted research that proved the East-to-West flow of North Sea currents, by releasing some 1,000 messages in bottles, designed to float a short distance above the sea bed.
Finders were requested, in English, Dutch and German, to send a postcard enclosed in the bottle to the United Kingdom"s Marine Biological Association in Plymouth. The majority were recovered just a few months later, but one was found on the German island of Amrum, as late as April 2015, and its postcard was duly returned to the Master of Business Administration.