Ebenezer Ford OBE

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

ARCS DIC (1890–1974) was a British marine zoologist. He was generally known as Ebb Ford. He was a competent artist and created several thousand "specimen drawings". From 1924 to 1929 he conducted a major study of the British herring shoals. He was a strong supporter of the Sea-Fishing Industry Act of 1933.

Life

He was born on 22 September 1890 in

Hove Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th cen ...

on the southern English coast, the son of George Horace Ford; his younger brother, Percy Ford, became an economist and was the first Professor of Economics at the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

. Ebb was educated at

Varndean School Varndean School is a secondary school serving a large area of Brighton, England. In 2013, 2017 and 2022, Ofsted inspectors described Varndean as a 'Good' school. Varndean shares the Surrenden Campus with Balfour Primary School, Dorothy Stringe ...

then at Brighton College for two years before going to

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

to study Science under

Clifford Dobell Cecil Clifford Dobell FRS (22 February 1886, Birkenhead – 23 December 1949, London) was a biologist, specifically a protozoologist. He studied intestinal amoebae, and algae. He was a leading authority on the history of protistology. 1910–191 ...

. He specialised in marine zoology. He did research as a Huxley Scholar and was awarded the Sarah Marshall Exhibition in 1913. In the same year he was given the post of Assistant Naturalist at the Plymouth Laboratory. As with many of his generation his plans were disrupted by the outbreak of the

First World War 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 firstly volunteered and joined the

Sussex Yeomanry The Sussex Yeomanry is a yeomanry regiment of the British Army dating from 1794. It was initially formed when there was a threat of French invasion during the Napoleonic Wars. After being reformed in the Second Boer War, it served in the First Wo ...

but then applied for an officer’s commission, and on obtaining this, in July 1915, joined the

Royal Fusiliers The Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army in continuous existence for 283 years. It was known as the 7th Regiment of Foot until the Childers Reforms of 1881. The regiment served in many wars ...

. He saw active service in France and was wounded at the

Battle of Passchendaele The Third Battle of Ypres (german: link=no, Dritte Flandernschlacht; french: link=no, Troisième Bataille des Flandres; nl, Derde Slag om Ieper), also known as the Battle of Passchendaele (), was a campaign of the First World War, fought by t ...

in 1917. In 1919, he returned to

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymouth ...

to resume his role as Assistant Naturalist, and was immediately promoted to Fisheries Naturalist. Remaining in Plymouth he eventually rose to be Assistant Director of the Laboratory in 1935. His career was again interrupted by the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

during which, after a period in the Home Guard, he served in Air Intelligence in the Air Ministry in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

from November 1941. In 1949 he left Plymouth to become Director of the Marine Station at Millport, in replacement of Richard Elmhirst. He then became first full time Secretary of the Scottish Marine Biological Association. In 1950 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were

Maurice Yonge Sir Charles Maurice Yonge, CBE, FRS FRSE (9 December 1899 – 17 March 1986) was an English marine zoologist. Life Charles Maurice Yonge was born in Silcoates School near Wakefield in Yorkshire in 1899 the son of John Arthur Yonge (1865-1946 ...

Charles Wynford Parsons Charles Wyndford Parsons FRSE (1901-1950) was a 20th-century British zoologist. Life He was born in Swansea on 22 July 1901. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School then studied Zoology at Cambridge University graduating MA in 1924. He then be ...

, Robert Campbell Garry, and sir James Wilfred Cook. He retired in March 1956 and returned to his native county of

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

, naming his house Keppel after the Keppel pier at Millport. He received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) on New Year’s Day 1957 for services to marine science.''

The London Gazette ''The London Gazette'' is one of the official journals of record or government gazettes of the Government of the United Kingdom, and the most important among such official journals in the United Kingdom, in which certain statutory notices are ...

'', 1 January 1957 He died at the King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, on 14 October 1974.

Publications

Ford wrote in the Fishing News magazine under the pen-name of Quibbon *''Nuclear division of the Limax Amoeba'' (1913) *''Statistical Methods for Research Workers'' (1925)

Family

He married Alice Gurr in August 1916. She died in 1950. They had one daughter, Joan.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ford, Ebenezer 1890 births 1974 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 20th-century British zoologists