David Lambert Lack was born on 16 July 1910. He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read zoology. A keen ornithologist and active member of the Cambridge Bird Club, he participated with Colin Bertram in the Cambridge University Expedition to Bear Island in 1932, during which a programme of ornithological research was conducted. The following year, he returned to the Arctic as a member of the Cambridge University Expedition to East Greenland, in company with Bertram and the ornithologist, Brian Birley Roberts. Between 1933 and 1940, Lack served as zoology master at Dartington Hall School, travelling on an expedition to the Galapagos Islands between 1938 and 1939. During the Second World War, he served in the Army Operational Research Group, assisting in the development of radar techniques. In 1945, he was appointed director of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford, a post he held until his death on 12 March 1973.
Published work Population studies of birds by David Lambert Lack, Clarendon Press Oxford (1966) SPRI Library Shelf 598.2:577.48
From the guide to the David Lack collection, 1932-1933, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)
