Richard Laws

Richard "Dick" Maitland Laws CBE FRS ScD (23 April 1926 - 7 October 2014) was Director of the British Antarctic Survey, 1973–1987; Master of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, 1985–1996 and Secretary of the Zoological Society of London.

Career

English mammalogist and Antarctic scientist, Dr Richard Laws was born in Whitley Bay, Northumberland and educated at Cambridge.[1] He started his career as a zoologist on the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in 1947,[2] where he investigated the ecology of elephant seals in the South Orkney Islands and South Georgia. These formed the subject of his 1953 Cambridge PhD. After spending a season as a whaling inspector, he joined the national Institute of Oceanography (1955-61) where he studied whales.

Outside Antarctica, he was also an expert on the large African mammals. In 1960, he was appointed Director of the Nuffield Unit of Tropical Animal Ecology in Uganda. Over the next eight years, his research focused on hippopotamus and elephant ecology. Dr Laws spent a year as Director of the Tsavo Research Project in Kenya (1967-68).[2] Needing data from 300 dead elephants, Dr Laws' research at Tsavo involved the slaughter of 300 wild elephants.

Laws returned to Cambridge in 1968 to resume his Antarctic research. In 1969, he became Head of the Life Sciences Division of the British Antarctic Survey. He succeeded Vivian Fuchs as BAS Director in 1973, a post he held until retirement in May 1987.[2] On his retirement, a fund was established for a prize to be awarded in recognition of the achievements of outstanding young scientists of the Survey.[3] The Laws Prize continues to be awarded annually, with the fund administered by the BAS Club.

He was Master of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, from 1985 until 1996. He was a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission.

Prizes and awards

In 1954, Laws won the Bruce memorial prize for his work on the ecology of elephant seals.[2] He was awarded the Polar Medal in 1975.[4]

Dr Laws was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980, and is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.[2]

In 1991, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by the University of Bath.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Laws, Richard Maitland 1926-. The Houghton Mifflin dictionary of biography (Houghton Mifflin Company (from Google Books)). 2003. p. 903. ISBN 061825210X. Retrieved 5 November 2012.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Dr Richard Laws". National Oceanographic Centre. Retrieved 5 November 2012.
  3. ↑ "The Laws Prize 2012". British Antarctic Survey Club. Retrieved 5 November 2012.
  4. ↑ anon. (1976). "In Brief: The Polar Medal". Polar Record 18: 188. doi:10.1017/S0032247400000188. Retrieved 5 November 2012.
  5. ↑ "Honorary Graduates 1989 to present". bath.ac.uk. University of Bath. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
  • A & C Black (October 2010). LAWS, Richard Maitland. Who's Who 2011 (online ed.) (Oxford University Press). Retrieved 21 May 2011.


Professional and academic associations
Preceded by
John Guest Phillips		 Secretary of the
Zoological Society of London
1984–1988 		Succeeded by
Barry Albert Cross