David Lack facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
David Lack
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Lack in 1966, photo by Eric Hosking
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David Lambert Lack
16 July 1910 London, England
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| Died | 12 March 1973 (aged 62) |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
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| Children | 4, including Andrew Lack |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Ornithology |
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| Other notable students | Robert H. MacArthur |
David Lambert Lack (1910–1973) was a British scientist who studied birds. He was an evolutionary biologist, meaning he studied how living things change over time. He also worked in ecology, which is about how living things interact with their environment, and ethology, the study of animal behavior.
Lack wrote important books like Darwin's Finches, about the birds of the Galapagos Islands. He also wrote Life of the Robin and Swifts in a Tower. He came up with an idea called Lack's principle, which explains why birds lay a certain number of eggs. He believed this number was chosen by natural selection to help individual birds survive. His work helped change how people studied birds, focusing more on living birds in their natural homes. He was also the director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at the University of Oxford for many years.
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Early Life and Education
David Lack was born in London, England, on July 16, 1910. He was the oldest of four children. His father was a doctor who became the head of the British Medical Association. David's mother was an actress and supported women's rights.
David was taught at home until he was seven. He then went to several schools, including Gresham's School. He loved birds from a young age. By the time he was nine, he knew the names of most birds. He even won prizes for his essays about birds.
Instead of becoming a doctor like his father, David wanted to study animals. He went to Magdalene College, Cambridge University. There, he studied botany (plants), zoology (animals), and geology (rocks and earth). He joined the Cambridge Ornithological Club and went on trips to study birds, including two to the Arctic. His first scientific paper, about nightjars, was published in 1932.
Career and Research
After college, David Lack became a science teacher at Dartington Hall School in Devon. While teaching, he spent four years studying robins. He watched their behavior, songs, and how they set up their territories. He also used bird ringing to track individual birds. This work led to his first major book, The Life of the Robin, published in 1943.
In 1938, Lack took a year off to study birds on the Galapagos Islands. He focused on the finches there. He later used this information to write his most famous book, Darwin's Finches.
During World War II, Lack worked for the British Army. He studied how radar could be used. During this time, he noticed that birds caused strange signals on the radar. This led him to create a new field of study called radar ornithology, which uses radar to track bird migration.
In 1945, David Lack became the director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford University. He stayed in this job until he passed away in 1973.
Studying Living Birds
Lack was a pioneer in studying birds in their natural habitats. He focused on their life stories and used numbers to understand them. At the time, many bird scientists focused on collecting and describing birds. Lack's approach helped change ornithology to be more about how birds live and behave.
He was also a great mentor to his students. He let them choose their own research topics and encouraged them to find the simplest explanations for things.
Darwin's Finches
Lack's book Darwin's Finches (1947) made the term "Darwin's finches" famous. These are a group of birds on the Galapagos Islands that helped Charles Darwin develop his theory of natural selection.
When Lack first studied these finches, he thought their different beak sizes helped them recognize each other. But later, he realized that the different beak sizes were actually adaptations. This means their beaks had changed over time to help them eat different kinds of food. This idea showed how important natural selection is in evolution. Lack's work helped build the foundation for later studies by scientists like Peter and Rosemary Grant.
Lack's Principle
In 1943, David Lack became very interested in why birds lay a certain number of eggs, known as their "clutch size." He came up with what is now called Lack's Principle. This principle says 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."
In simpler words, birds lay the number of eggs that allows them to raise the most chicks successfully. If they lay too many, they might not be able to feed them all, and fewer would survive.
Population Regulation
Lack was also very interested in how animal populations are controlled in nature. His book The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers (1954) was very important. He argued that natural selection plays a key role in how many offspring animals have. He disagreed with the idea that populations stay constant because birth rates match death rates.
Published Books
David Lack wrote many books during his career. Some of his most well-known books include:
- Lack, David. 1943. The Life of the Robin.
- Lack, David. 1947. Darwin's Finches.
- Lack, David. 1954. The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers.
- Lack, David. 1956. Swifts in a Tower.
- Lack, David. 1957. Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief: The Unresolved Conflict.
- Lack, David. 1966. Population Studies of Birds.
- Lack, David. 1968. Ecological Adaptations for Breeding in Birds.
Awards and Honours
David Lack received many awards for his important work:
- 1951: He became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), which is a very high honor for scientists in the UK.
- 1958: He received the Godman-Salvin Medal from the British Ornithologists' Union.
- 1962–1966: He was the President of the International Ornithological Congress.
- 1964–1965: He was the President of the British Ecological Society.
- 1972: He was awarded the Darwin Medal by the Royal Society.
In 2010, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Edward Grey Institute held a special meeting to celebrate his scientific contributions.
Personal Life
David Lack married Elizabeth Silva, who was also a bird scientist. Elizabeth first worked as his secretary but soon became his field assistant, helping him study birds in the woods. They got married in 1949 and had four children: Peter, Andrew, Paul, and Catherine. Two of their children, Peter and Andrew, also became biologists.
David Lack enjoyed music, field hockey, and tennis. He passed away on March 12, 1973, from a type of cancer.
Religious Beliefs
David Lack grew up in a Christian family. As a young adult, he was unsure about religion, but he became a Christian in 1948. He tried to find a way for science and religion to exist together. In 1957, he wrote a book called Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief. In this book, he suggested that evolution could explain many things, but not ideas like morality, truth, beauty, or free will.
Arthur Cain, another scientist, once said that David Lack was one of the few religious people he knew who didn't let his religion tell him what to believe about natural selection.
Images for kids
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The Common Swift, one of many subjects studied by Lack.
