Born in Northam, Devon, W. H. ('Bunny') Dowdeswell joined the University of Bath School of Education as a senior lecturer in 1969 after nearly twenty years at Winchester College. As well as being Britain's first 'professor of biological education', Dowdeswell was also a respected academic biologist, specialising in ecology and lepidoptery.

The collection contains material relating to various aspects of Wilfrid Hogarth Dowdeswell's academic and teaching career at the University of Bath. It also contains material relating to Dowdeswell's work with English butterfly populations and his nature conservation work in the village of Atworth, Wiltshire, including two series of field notebooks and a set of statistical data documenting his collaborative work with E. B. Ford on the Meadow Brown butterfly.

The collection was donated to the University of Bath in April 1999 by Mrs M. Dowdeswell, the widow of Professor Dowdeswell.

A paper catalogue (ref. 83/4/99), prepared in collaboration with the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists (NCUACS), providing contents details of the Dowdeswell Collection is available in PDF format.

Size: 9 boxes, c 187 items.