John Krebs, Baron Krebs

This article is about the zoologist. For the U.S. Representative from California, see John Hans Krebs.

John Richard Krebs, Baron Krebs FRS (born 11 April 1945, Sheffield, England) is a world leader in zoology and more specifically bird behaviour. He is currently the Principal of Jesus College, Oxford University. Krebs was knighted in 1999, was the first Chairman of the British Food Standards Agency (2000–05), and was created a life peer in 2007.

Life and career

The son of Hans Adolf Krebs, the German biochemist who described the uptake and release of energy in cells (the Krebs cycle), John Krebs was educated at the City of Oxford High School and Pembroke College, Oxford (BA 1966; MA 1970; DPhil 1970). He then held posts at the University of British Columbia and the University College of North Wales, Bangor, before returning to Oxford as a University Lecturer in Zoology, with a fellowship at Wolfson College, then Pembroke. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1984 and since 1988 has held a Royal Society Research Professorship in the Department of Zoology, Oxford University, where he was based at Pembroke College until his appointment to the position of Principal of Jesus College in 2005.

Krebs's career has been both productive and influential. His speciality is ornithology. His publications include more than 130 refereed papers, 5 books, and 130 book chapters, reviews, or popular pieces. They have introduced new methods to the science of ornithology, including the use of optimality models to predict foraging behaviour, and, more recently, techniques from neurobiology and experimental psychology to assess the mental capacities of birds and to relate these to particular regions of the brain.

During his chairmanship of the Food Standards Agency, Krebs criticised the organic food movement, saying that people buying such food were "not getting value for money, in my opinion and in the opinion of the Food Standards Agency, if they think they're buying food with extra nutritional quality or extra safety. We don't have the evidence to support those claims."

Lord Krebs was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2006-2007 and chaired the Working Party on Public Health, 2006-07. He will take up the chairmanship of the National Network of Science Learning Centres in 2007.

On 15 February 2007, the House of Lords Appointments Commission announced that he was to become a non-party political (cross-bench) life peer. The peerage was gazetted on 28 March 2007 as Baron Krebs, of Wytham in the County of Oxfordshire.

Notable publications

Books

• Stephens, D. W. & Krebs, J. R. (1986) Foraging Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691084424
• Kamil, Alan C., John R. Krebs and H. Ronald Pulliam. (1987) Foraging Behavior, Plenum Press, New York and London.
• Krebs, J. R. & Davies, N.B. (1993) An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology, 4th ed. Oxford: Blackwell ISBN 0632035463
• Krebs, J. R. & Davies, N.B., eds. (1997) Behavioural Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach, 4th ed. Oxford: Blackwell. (1st ed. 1978.) ISBN 0865427313
• Dawkins, R. & Krebs, J. R. (1978). "Animal signals: information or manipulation?", Behavioural Ecology: an evolutionary approach 1st ed. (Krebs, J. R. & Davies, N.B., eds) Blackwell: Oxford, pp 282–309.
• Krebs, J. R. and Dawkins, R. (1984). "Animal signals: mind-reading and manipulation", Behavioural Ecology: an evolutionary approach, 2nd ed (Krebs, J. R. & Davies, N.B., eds), Sinauer: pp 380–402.

Journal articles

• Dawkins, R.; Krebs, J. (1979). "Arms races between and within species". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing papers of a Biological character. Royal Society (Great Britain) 205 (1161): 489–511. doi:10.1098/rspb.1979.0081. PMID 42057. 
• Krebs, J. R. (2005). "The Croonian Lecture 2004 Risk: Food, fact and fantasy". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 360 (1458): 1133–1144. doi:10.1098/rstb.2005.1665. PMC 1569505. PMID 16147514. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1569505. 
• Biegler, R.; McGregor, A.; Krebs, J.; Healy, S. (2001). "A larger hippocampus is associated with longer-lasting spatial memory". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 (12): 6941–6944. doi:10.1073/pnas.121034798. PMC 34457. PMID 11391008. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=34457. 
• Clayton, N.; Krebs, J. (1994). "Hippocampal growth and attrition in birds affected by experience". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 91 (16): 7410–7414. doi:10.1073/pnas.91.16.7410. PMC 44410. PMID 8052598. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=44410. 
• Krebs, J.; Sherry, D.; Healy, S.; Perry, V.; Vaccarino, A. (1989). "Hippocampal specialization of food-storing birds". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 86 (4): 1388–1392. doi:10.1073/pnas.86.4.1388. PMC 286696. PMID 2919184. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=286696. 

See also

• Behavioural ecology
• Evolutionary arms race
• Signalling theory

Further reading

• "Elliott Coues Award, 1999: Sir John R. Krebs", Jesus College Record, 2005.

External links

• Oxford University