George C. Varley

George Copley Varley (1910–1983) was a British entomologist and a pioneer in the studies of insect population dynamics and was the author of Insect Population Ecology, an influential text. He was Hope Professor of Entomology at Oxford from 1948.[1] A colleague of David Lack during the war years, he conducted studies on insect population dynamics in Wytham Woods. He was married to ichthyologist Margaret Brown.[2]

Varley studied at Manchester Grammar School before joining Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1929 with a scholarship. He won the Frank Smart Prize for zoology in 1933 and became a researcher at the Entomological Field Station. He received a Ph.D. for his studies on "The Natural Control of the Knap-weed Gallfly" conducted from 1935 to 1938. During World War II, he worked on radar installations on the coast where he was a colleague of David Lack. He introduced Lack to ideas on density dependent population regulation and was a close friend, being best man at Lack's wedding. In 1945, Varley became a reader in entomology at King's College, Newcastle-on-Tyne and in 1948 he was appointed Hope Professor at Oxford.[3]