Percy Roycroft Lowe (2 January 1870 – 18 August 1948) was an Englishsurgeon andornithologist.
Lowe was born atStamford, Lincolnshire and studiedmedicine atJesus College, Cambridge.[1] He served as a civil surgeon in theSecond Boer War, and it was whilst inSouth Africa that he became interested in ornithology. On his return he became private physician toSir Frederick Johnstone, 8th Baronet, whose constant travel exposed Lowe to birds all around the world.[2]
During World War One he served in theRoyal Army Medical Corps; he was Officer in Command on Princess Christian Ambulance Train for which he was awarded theOBE in 1920.
Lowe worked withDorothea Bate on fossilostriches inChina.[3]
In November 1919 he succeededWilliam Robert Ogilvie-Grant as Curator of Birds at theNatural History Museum, retiring on his sixty-fifth birthday in 1935. He was succeeded byNorman Boyd Kinnear.
He was editor of theBulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club from 1920 to 1925 and president of theBritish Ornithologists' Union from 1938 to 1943. In 1933 he was one of eleven people[a] involved in the appeal that led to the foundation of theBritish Trust for Ornithology (BTO), an organisation for the study ofbirds in the British Isles.[4] His 1936 publicationThe finches of the Galapagos in relation to Darwin's conception of species introduced the termDarwin's finches.[5]
In 1939 he was elected aCorresponding Member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union and in 1946 was awarded theGodman-Salvin Medal of theBritish Ornithological Union.[6][7]
An extinct species of penguin,Archaeospheniscus lowei, was named in his honor to recognize his research into penguin fossils.[8]
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