David Lack

David Lambert Lack FRS (16 July 1910 – 12 March 1973) was a British evolutionary biologist who made contributions to ornithology, ecology, and ethology.

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

In 1928, with an essay on 'My favourite birds' he was the national winner of the senior prize (a silver medal) in the Public School Essay Competition, organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

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

His father then considered entomology which was then the only professional field in zoology and found work for David at the Frankfurt museum in the summer of 1929.

He spent four months pinning insects in the Senckenberg Museum and found it “extremely” boring.

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

His first scientific paper was on the display of nightjars, published in the Ibis in 1932.

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

He 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.

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

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

By the age of nine, he had learnt the names of most birds and had written out an alphabetically arranged life-list.

Lack wrote The Birds of Cambridgeshire (1934) which was published by the Cambridge Bird Club.

In this work, he departed from the contemporary style with a distinct de-emphasis on rare and accidental birds.

After Cambridge, Lack, on the recommendation of Julian Huxley took up a position as a science mentor at Dartington Hall School, Devonshire from 1934 until Summer 1938 when he took a year off to study bird behaviour on the Galapagos Islands.

In 1935 he made his first trip to the United States as a chaperone for a Dartington Hall student returning to California.

Here he met Joseph Grinnell and Robert McCabe and gave a talk at the Cooper Ornithological Club.

In New York, he met Ernst Mayr at the American Museum of Natural History.

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

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

With the data that he collected in the Galapagos, especially on the finches he went to the United States.

April to August 1939 was spent at the California Academy of Sciences which held a large collection of the finches of Galapagos that had been studied earlier by Harry Swarth and at Ernst Mayr's home in New Jersey.

While in the US he made a study of the tricoloured blackbird with John T. Emlen.

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

His 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.

He developed what is now 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 (also known as group selection).

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

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

Lack was born in London, the oldest of four children of Harry Lambert Lack MD FRCS, who later became President of the British Medical Association.

The name 'Lack' is derived from 'Lock'.

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

Although his father had some interest in birds as a boy it does not appear that he influenced David's interest.

His mother Kathleen was the daughter of Lt. Col. McNeil Rind of the Indian army.

Kathleen's father was Scottish and on her mother's side was part Irish, Greek and Georgian.

Kathleen had been an actor and was a supporter of women's suffrage.

At home they organized meetings of the poetry society.

David 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.

Lack was taught biology at Gresham's by W.H. Foy and G.H. Lockett.

Lack received an Sc.D. from Cambridge University in 1948.