 Later, Garstang's daughter married Alister Hardy, strengthening Gurney's connections with zoology.Robert and Gamzu had one child, Oliver Gurney (1911-2001), who became a leading Assyriologist and Hittitologist.Gurney's first scientific work was a paper on metamorphosis in the crab "Corystes cassivelaunus", which he published in 1902 while still an undergraduate at the University of Oxford.