Percy Lowe

Percy Roycroft Lowe (2 January 1870–18 August 1948) was an English surgeon and ornithologist.

Lowe was born at Stamford, Lincolnshire and studied medicine at Jesus College, Cambridge. He served as a civil surgeon in the Second Boer War, and it was whilst in South Africa that he became interested in ornithology. On his return he became private physician to Sir Frederic Johnstone, and during World War One was medical officer on an ambulance ship in the Mediterranean.

Lowe worked with Dorothea Bate on fossil ostriches in China.

In November 1919 he succeeded William Robert Ogilvie-Grant as Curator of Birds at the Natural History Museum, retiring on his sixty-fifth birthday in 1935. He was succeeded by Norman Boyd Kinnear.

He was editor of the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club from 1920 to 1925 and president of the British Ornithologists' Union from 1938 to 1943. His 1936 publication The finches of the Galapagos in relation to Darwin's conception of species introduced the term Darwin's finches.

In 1939 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union.

Publications

• Lowe, P. R. (1936), "The finches of the Galapagos in relation to Darwin's conception of species", Ibis, no. 6, pp. 310–321

References

• Lack, David (1940), "Evolution of the Galapagos Finches", Nature, vol. 146, no. 146 (published 7 September 1940), pp. 324–327, doi:10.1038/146324a0, retrieved 9 December 2008
• Steinheimer, F. D. (2004), "Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836", Journal of Ornithology, vol. 145, no. 145(4), pp. 300–320, doi:10.1007/s10336-004-0043-8, retrieved 8 December 2008