Millport Marine Laboratory: Mr. E. Ford

Abstract

MR. E. FOBD, assistant director of the Marine Laboratory, Plymouth, will succeed Mr. Elmhirst. After graduating at the Royal College of Science, Mr. Ford gained the Sarah Marshall Exhibition for research work as Huxley Scholar in 1913 and was appointed assistant naturalist at Plymouth at the end of that year. He served as an infantry officer in the First World War, When he was wounded in Belgium, and again on the staff of the R.A.F. as intelligence officer during 1941-45. His work at Plymouth, where steady promotion culminated in his appointment as assistant director in 1935, has been primarily on fish, and he is the author of a series of admirable studies on larval and post-larval fishes, on the life-history of the dogfish, on herring and on osteological variation in the backbone and the skull. In addition, he extended the quantitative survey of bottom fauna, initiated by Petersen, to the waters of Plymouth Sound. He was ‘Buckland Professor' in 1936, and his lectures have been published under the title of "The Nation‘s Sea-Fish Supply". The Scottish Marine Biological Association may be considered most fortunate in persuading Mr. Ford to assume responsibility for the further development of the Millport Laboratory, where his administrative ability, his high scientific attainments and, above all, his qualities of friendly leadership will find full scope.