Percy Lowe

{{Short description|English surgeon and ornithologist (1870–1948)}}

File:Lowe_Sclater.jpg, 1934]]

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

Life

Lowe was born at Stamford, Lincolnshire and studied medicine at Jesus College, Cambridge.{{acad|id=LW887PR|name=Lowe, Percy Roycroft}} 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 Frederick Johnstone, 8th Baronet, whose constant travel exposed Lowe to birds all around the world.{{Cite journal |last=Kinnear |first=N. B. |date=1948 |title=Dr. P. R. Lowe, O.B.E |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/162443a0 |journal=Nature |language=en |volume=162 |issue=4116 |pages=443 |doi=10.1038/162443a0 |bibcode=1948Natur.162..443K |issn=1476-4687}}

During World War One he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps; he was Officer in Command on Princess Christian Ambulance Train for which he was awarded the OBE in 1920.

Lowe worked with Dorothea Bate on fossil ostriches in China.[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/67163?docPos=2 Bate, Dorothea Minola Alice (1878–1951), palaeontologist] by Karolyn Shindler in Dictionary of National Biography online (Retrieved 23 November 2007)

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. In 1933 he was one of eleven people{{efn|The letter was signed: {{Flatlist|

Desborough
Hugh S. Gladstone
Grey of Fallodon
Julian S. Huxley (Chancellor of Oxford University)
T. G Longstaff
Percy R. Lowe
P. Chalmers Mitchell
Rothschild
Scone M.P. (Chairman, British Trust for Ornithology)
E. L. Turner
H. F. Witherby (President, British Ornithologists' Union)

}}}} involved in the appeal that led to the foundation of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), an organisation for the study of birds in the British Isles.{{cite news |title=Observers of Birds |url=https://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/u38/downloads/home-news/2013-06/bto-letter-the-times-July-1-1933.pdf |work=The Times |date=1 July 1933}} His 1936 publication The finches of the Galapagos in relation to Darwin's conception of species introduced the term Darwin's finches.{{harvnb|Steinheimer|2004|p=[http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A161&pageseq=1 300]}}
{{harvnb|Lack|1940}}

In 1939 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union and in 1946 was awarded the Godman-Salvin Medal of the British Ornithological Union.{{cite web|url = http://www.bou.org.uk/about-the-bou/administration-and-people/medals-and-awards/|title = Medals and Awards|publisher = British Ornithological Union|accessdate = 11 January 2014|url-status = dead|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20170331172205/https://www.bou.org.uk/about-the-bou/administration-and-people/medals-and-awards/|archivedate = 31 March 2017}}{{Cite web |date=1946 |title=Percy R. Lowe [picture] |url=https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/3793115 |access-date=2024-07-01 |website=National Library of Australia |language=en}}

An extinct species of penguin, Archaeospheniscus lowei, was named in his honor to recognize his research into penguin fossils.{{Cite web |last=Miskelly |first=C. M. |date=2022 |title=Lowe's penguin |url=https://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/lowes-penguin |access-date=2024-07-01 |website=New Zealand Birds Online}}