37 Facts About David Lack

1.

David Lambert Lack FRS was a British evolutionary biologist who made contributions to ornithology, ecology, and ethology.

2.

David Lack's 1947 book, Darwin's Finches, on the finches of the Galapagos Islands was a landmark work as were his other popular science books on Life of the Robin and Swifts in a Tower.

3.

David Lack developed what is known as Lack's Principle which explained the evolution of avian clutch sizes in terms of individual selection as opposed to the competing contemporary idea that they had evolved for the benefit of species.

4.

David Lack's pioneering life-history studies of the living bird helped in changing the nature of ornithology from what was then a collection-oriented field.

5.

David Lack was a longtime director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at the University of Oxford.

6.

David Lack's father grew up in a farming family from Norfolk and became a leading ear, nose and throat surgeon at the London Hospital.

7.

David Lack was schooled at home until seven and then went to the Open Air School in Regent's Park before going to The Hall, Hampstead followed by Foster's School, Stubbington and Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk.

8.

David Lack went to Magdalene College, Cambridge and received a BA second class in 1933 after studying botany, zoology and geology for part I of the Tripos and zoology for part II.

9.

Until the age of fifteen, David Lack lived in a large house in Devonshire Place, London.

10.

The family spent their summers in New Romney Kent where David Lack became familiar with the local birds especially on Romney Marsh.

11.

In 1926, David Lack won the Holland-Martin Natural History Prize for an essay on "Three Birds of Kelling Heath".

12.

David Lack did not wish to follow his father's profession in medicine and took an interest in zoology.

13.

David Lack joined the Cambridge Ornithological Club whose members included Peter Scott, Arthur Duncan, Dominic Serventy, and Tom Harrisson.

14.

David Lack joined on several expeditions with Cambridge researchers including two to the Arctic.

15.

David Lack wrote The Birds of Cambridgeshire which was published by the Cambridge Bird Club.

16.

David Lack returned via the SS Bremen, only one of about four English speakers on the German ship.

17.

David Lack was only in the Galapagos for part of that year, starting August 1938.

18.

David Lack returned home in September 1939, after the outbreak of war.

19.

David Lack published The Galapagos Finches, A Study in Variation in which he examined variations within species across islands and considered that many of them were non-adaptive and due to founder effect and genetic drift.

20.

David Lack examined robin behaviour, song, territory, pairing and breeding using ringing to mark and track individual birds.

21.

David Lack was committed to pacificism and debated the philosophy even during his Dartington days with the founder of the college, Leonard Knight Elmhirst.

22.

David Lack was one of the pioneers of life-history studies in Britain, especially those based on quantitative approaches, when some traditional ornithologists of the time were focussing their studies on morphology and geographic distribution.

23.

David Lack's work suggested that natural selection favoured clutch sizes that ensured the greatest number of surviving young.

24.

David Lack wrote numerous papers in ornithological journals, and had a knack of choosing memorable titles: he once claimed to have single-handedly caused the renaming of a group of birds through the submission of a scientific paper with the title "Territory and Polygamy in a Bishop".

25.

David Lack's work laid the foundations for the much more extensive work of Peter and Rosemary Grant and their colleagues.

26.

David Lack's work feeds into studies of island biogeography which continue the same range of issues presented by the Galapagos fauna on a more varied canvas.

27.

In 1943 David Lack took an interest in clutch size after reading Moreau's manuscript sent to the Ibis.

28.

David Lack was then an assistant to the editor of the Ibis.

29.

David Lack postulated what is known as David Lack's Principle, which states that "the clutch size of each species of bird has been adapted by natural selection to correspond with the largest number of young for which the parents can, on average, provide enough food".

30.

David Lack took a keen interest in the mechanisms involved in regulating populations in nature.

31.

David Lack followed up on the criticisms in his later books including Population Studies of Birds.

32.

David Lack married Elizabeth Lack who was an ornithologist.

33.

David Lack wished to join the Royal Academy of Music in London but the war led to her serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service as an ambulance driver in Europe.

34.

David Lack enjoyed music and was a fan of field hockey and tennis in which he participated.

35.

David Lack's parents belonged to the Church of England, and he was an agnostic as an early adult but became a convert to Anglicanism in 1948, possibly influenced by Dan and Mary Neylan, friends at Dartington Hall.

36.

David Lack sought to find a compromise between science and religion and wrote, in 1957, Evolutionary theory and Christian belief, on the relationship between Christian faith and evolutionary theory.

37.

David Lack believed that evolution could not account for morality, truth, beauty, free will, self-awareness and individual responsibility.