Obituary: Roy (L. R.) Taylor (1924–2007)

Abstract

L. R. Taylor, past President (1984-85) and editor of the Journal of Animal Ecology (1976-89), died on 26 January 2007 at his home in Devon after a prolonged illness. He will be remembered by ecologists and agricultural scientists around the world for his many contributions to insect ecology and his commitment to agricultural entomology. But it is Taylor's Power Law the power law scaling relationship that describes the 'fat tails' of the distribution of abundance of nearly all organisms that is the contribution for which he will be remembered by scientists in many disciplines. The power law is one of several fundamental scaling relationships in ecology. The 1961 Nature publication announcing the discovery is one of the most widely cited publications in all of ecology and agriculture. It has generated considerable discussion as to its origins, its generality, which seems to be very wide, and what exactly it describes. It has defied satisfactory derivation and placement in population ecology theory, but has proven to be very useful both in basic ecology and in agriculture and statistics, providing a powerful means for making data obey the mathematical assumptions underlying statistical analysis. Born on 14 December 1924, only child of Ethel and Leslie, Roy showed a keen interest in natural history from a very early age. He collected butterflies and moths, and learned to rear them in his parents' terraced house in Manchester. He joined the RAF on his 17th