Woke biology

What's in a name?: A postage stamp printed in Yugoslavia shows the cave beetle named Anophthalmus hitleri. The practice of naming species of plants and animals after people has recently become a contentious issue. — Dreamstime/TNS

WE are all familiar by now with the movement in the United States to eradicate the names of racists and other villains from the buildings, institutions and public spaces where they were once honoured.

Caltech excised the name of Robert A. Millikan, its longest-serving president and a known eugenicist, from its campus; Princeton removed Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public policy school; UC removed from its San Francisco law school the name of Serranus Hastings, its original donor, because of his complicity in the California Indian genocides of the 1850s and 1860s.