Sir Vincent Brian Wigglesworth, C. B. E., 17 April 1899 - 12 February 1994

Abstract

On 17 April 1899, in Kirkham, Lancashire, Vincent Brian Wigglesworth was born into a talented and idiosyncratic Victorian family with roots going back to the hamlet of Wigglesworth in the south-west comer of Yorkshire. He was the son of Sydney Wigglesworth, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., Captain R.A.M.C., and Margaret Emmeline (née Pierce). Sydney Wigglesworth was a general practitioner but also an amateur mechanic and inventor who had studied engineering at Owens College (later the University of Manchester) before changing to medicine. He made scale models of locomotives and was a passionate pioneer motorist. Margaret Pierce came from a well-to-do family of London solicitors originating from Devon yeoman stock with business and nautical interests (Pierce Sound in North West Canada is named after an eighteenth-century ancestor). As an amateur painter trained at South Kensington she developed a great eye for colour. It was the kind of family that produced many famous Englishmen, artists as well as scientists. V.B.W.’s scientific illustrations show that he inherited his mothers artistic talent. His elder brother’s career as a landscape painter was cut short by his early death in 1936.