Carrington Bonsor Williams

Carrington Bonsor Williams F.R.S. (7 October 1889-12 July 1981) better known as C. B. Williams or just "C.B." to friends was a British entomologist and pioneering quantitative ecologist who is best remembered for his work on butterfly migration.Wigglesworth, V. B. (1982) Carrington Bonsor Williams. 7 October 1889-12 July 1981. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 28:666-684.]

Early life

Williams' father was Alfred Williams, a banker and his mother was Lillian Bonsor Williams (nee Kirkland). He grew up in busy Liverpool and was not influenced into scientific interests by his parents. He however had access to books on natural history and kept an aquarium. He studied at a preparatory school in Cheshire and later at Birkenhead School from 1903 to 1908.

Around 1897 the family moved to the Cheshire coast where there were open fields. At the age of twelve, during a summer in Beddgelert he and his sister were introduced to the world of caterpillars by a local doctor. They were later taken to a meeting of the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society. His name was put for membership and he was duly elected although he learnt later that the members thought they were voting for his father.

Career

After school he got a scholarship and went to Clare College, Cambridge. Here his interests moved towards biology and he obtained a Diploma of Agriculture. Here he came in contact with William Bateson who was then studying caterpillars and when Bateson was appointed the first Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution at Merton, Williams was offered a research studentship in entomology. He worked there for the next five years. He also visited the United States of America during this period, looking at agricultural entomology and meeting people such as T. H. Morgan who was a close associate of Bateson. Williams worked during this period on the Thysanoptera, their biology and systematics and along with J. D. Hood of the United States, described some new species.

During World War I he trained in the London School of Tropical Medicine, to assist the R.A.M.C. in identifying pathogenic bacteria and spent most of his time in "that unheroic branch of warfare", examining the stools of dysentery patients. He was then called to study a pest of sugar cane in the West Indies, "Tomaspis saccharina" which was threatening sugar supplies to Britain. Williams moved to Trinidad where he was to implement a plan made by J. C. Kershaw in 1913 to introduce a parasite.

While in the West Indies he saw his first migration of butterflies in British Guiana. There were thousands of yellow Pierids and they flew everyday for a fortnight. He became very interested in the phenomenon.

In 1920 he married Ellen Margaret Bain, the daughter of a British West Indian planter, John Purdie Bain and his wifeMary Rebecca Olton. Williams dedicated his book on "Patterns in the balance of nature" to his wife "in gratitude for her wisdom in the art of living". They had three sons.

In 1921 Williams returned to England and here he accepted a post in the Entomological Section of the Ministry of Agriculture in Egypt. His work in Egypt was mostly administrative but he was able to study some further aspects of insect migration as they applied to economic entomology. In 1927 he moved to Amani, Tanganyika where his first job was to oversee the laying of a road and two bridges, about which he said "I then felt how valuable a good training in entomology can be."

In Amani he again had occasion to study butterfly migration and in the second year he was able to study a locust invasion which managed to bring trains to a standstill. In 1929 he went home on leave with the intention of returning to East Africa but he accepted the offer of the Steven lectureship in Agricultural and Forest Entomology in the University of Edinburgh. In 1930 he wrote "The migration of butterflies"(473 pages) where he collected all that was known on butterflies and their migration.

Williams joined the staff at the Rothamsted agricultural research station in 1932 where Sir John Russell was Director. Russell had earlier invited R. A. Fisher and Williams was able to study certain quantitative aspects of insect populations. With Fisher, Williams was able to establish patterns in the diversity and numbers of insects caught in light traps. He noticed that logarithmic patterns appeared universal, which was also noted by other workers in ecology like Preston. [Preston, F. W. 1948. The commonness, and rarity, of species. Ecology 29:254-283.]

Williams used this pattern to predict the number of headlice on people using data on counts of lice from prisoners in a South Indian jail. Williams calculated that the number of persons with only one louse must be 107 and the actual was 106 and he wrote "so Nature was only one wrong".Wigglesworth, V. B. (1982) Carrington Bonsor Williams. 7 October 1889-12 July 1981. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 28:666-684.]

He continued to work after his retirement on a many aspects of insect ecology.

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