Sept. 27, 2021, 3:22 p.m.

(The Guardian) My friend Quentin Bone, who has died aged 89, was an outstanding marine zoologist whose publications on how fish swim made him a leader in this field while still in his 30s.His 1966 paper comparing and contrasting details of fine structure, innervation and performance of the two very different sorts of muscle that drive a fish through water, became a citation classic. His jointly authored Biology of Fishes (1982) is now in its third edition.Born in Hampstead, north London, Quentin was the eldest child of the muralist Mary Adshead and painter Stephen Bone, art critic for the Manchester Guardian in the 1950s, and grandson of the artist Sir Muirhead Bone. Quentin might well have become an artist himself, but as a schoolboy he went on countryside walks with his father, who was “rarely unable to name any flowers or insects we found”, and this led him to adopt a career in biology.From Warwick school, he went on to St John’s College, Oxford, graduating in 1954 with a first in zoology and comparative anatomy. He sta…

Login to grade this article.