Charles Birch

Louis Charles Birch FAA (8 February 1918 in Melbourne – 19 December 2009) was an Australian geneticist specialising in population ecology and was also well known as a theologian, writing widely on the topic of science and religion, winning the Templeton Prize in 1990. The prize recognised his work ascribing intrinsic value to all life.

Birch was born in Melbourne on 8 February 1918, the son of Harry Birch, a New Zealand-born bank manager with the ES&A Bank, and his Irish-born wife, Nora. He had a twin brother, Sidney, and an older brother, Hugh. Birch attended Scotch College, Melbourne, and focused on agriculture at university in Melbourne.

Birch was educated at University of Melbourne, receiving a Bachelor of Agricultural Science in 1939. His first job was in the entomology department at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute at the University of Adelaide, where he earned a Doctorate of Science in 1941.

During his six years of entomological research with his then-supervisor, Herbert Andrewartha, with whom he forged a close relationship, Birch demonstrated that external processes, driven by weather and other types of disturbance, were vastly important in controlling the numbers and distribution of animals. This radical challenge to the prevailing views, namely that populations were self-regulating based on competition for limited resources, became one of Birch's major and enduring contributions to the science of ecology.

In 1948, Birch became a senior lecturer in the Department of Zoology at the University of Sydney. Birch was later promoted to Reader in Zoology in 1954, and then the Challis Chair of Biology, which he held for 25 years from 1960 to 1984.

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