Derek A. Ratcliffe
Derek Almey Ratcliffe (born July 9, 1929 in Islington , London , † May 23, 2005 in Leeming Bar , North Yorkshire ) was a British ecologist and conservationist.
Life
Ratcliffe was the only son of Frank Bernard Ratcliffe and Kathleen Marie Almey. His father was a solo organist and cinema pianist, his mother was a teacher of French and English. He grew up on a farm south of Cromer in Norfolk . Nine years later the family moved to Carlisle . Ratcliffe studied from 1947 first zoology at the University of Sheffield , but then switched to botany. 1953 with a dissertation on the mountain vegetation of Snowdonia at Bangor University , Bangor , Wales to the Ph.D. PhD. He then served for a year with the Royal Army Education Corps in Catterick . In 1956, Ratcliffe became an employee of the Nature Conservancy Council , first in Edinburgh and from 1963 in the Monks Wood Experimental Station in Abbots Ripton near Huntingdon . From 1970 to 1973 he was deputy director of science. He was Executive Director from 1973 until his retirement in 1989. In 1978 he married Jeannette Chan-Mo, a secretary from the island of Mauritius .
Ratcliffe was the first scientist to demonstrate that the agricultural use of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane , dieldrin and other pesticides resulted in a sharp decline in raptor populations in Britain, particularly the peregrine falcon . In the 1980s, Ratcliffe persuaded the British government to stop tax breaks for planting non-native conifers in Scottish peat bogs, as the afforestation threatened the internationally important wetland Flow Country in counties Caithness and Sutherland .
Works
- 1962: Plant Communities of the Scottish Highlands (with Donald McVean)
- 1977: A Nature Conservation Review . ISBN 0-521-21159-X
- 1980: The Peregrine Falcon . Poyser
- 1991: Bird Life of Mountain and Upland . Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-33123-4
- 1997: The Raven . Poyser
- 2000: In Search of Nature . Broadfiel
- 2002: Lakeland . Collins New Naturalist. ISBN 0-00-711304-8
- 2005: Lapland: a natural history . Poyser. ISBN 0-7136-6529-7
- 2007: Galloway and the Borders Collins New Naturalist. ISBN 0-00-717401-2 . Published posthumously, completed a few days before his death in 2005.
literature
- Des Thompson: Ratcliffe, Derek Almey. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2009
- Des Thompson: Derek A. Ratcliffe In: Lawrence Goldman: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Supplement 2: 2005-2008 . ODNB Series, Oxford, 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-967154-0 , pp. 936-937.
- Des Thompson: Obiturary: Derek Ratcliffe In: The Guardian May 31, 2005
- Obituary: Derek Ratcliffe In: The Telegraph, May 27, 2005
- Ian Newton : Obituary Derek Ratcliffe . In: Ibis 148 (2) April 2006: 392-394
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ratcliffe, Derek A. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ratcliffe, Derek Almey (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British ecologist and conservationist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 9, 1929 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Islington , London |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 23, 2005 |
| Place of death | Leeming Bar , North Yorkshire |