Captain Cyril Diver, C.B.,

C.B.E. The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...

, (1892 – 17 February 1969), was a civil servant and amateur naturalist. He became the first Director-General of the

Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US. Founded in 1951, The Natu ...

Life

Diver was born in 1892, the son of Lt Colonel C Diver and the author, Maud Diver. Educated at

Dover College , motto_translation = I cannot refuse the task , established = , closed = , type = Public SchoolIndependent day and boarding , religion = Church of England , headmaster = Simon Fisher , r_head_label = , r_head ...

and

Trinity College, Oxford (That which you wish to be secret, tell to nobody) , named_for = The Holy Trinity , established = , sister_college = Churchill College, Cambridge , president = Dame Hilary Boulding , location = Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BH , coordinates ...

, after serving in France during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, he became a clerk in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

. In the 1930s he performed a systematic survey of the varied

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...

s of

Studland Studland is a village and civil parish on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, England. The village is located about north of the town of Swanage, over a steep chalk ridge, and south of the South East Dorset conurbation at Sandbanks, from which it is ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...

. A keen naturalist he was especially interested in molluscan ecology and genetics. During the war he was a clerk to the select committee on national expenditure. In May 1940 the House of Commons appointed its "Miss K Midwinter" as the first woman to be a clerk. She was initially placed as an assistant to "Captain Diver", but she went on to have her own committee in the following year. Between 2012 and 2015, the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

ran a citizen science project named after Cyril – the Cyril Diver Project that was designed to carry out a comprehensive ecological survey of the Studland peninsula in a similar manner to Diver's original study.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Diver, Cyril 1892 births 1969 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Oxford Conchologists English naturalists 20th-century British zoologists 20th-century naturalists