Denis Owen

Denis Frank Owen (4 April 1931, London, England – 3 October 1996, Oxford, England) was a British ecologist, naturalist, author, broadcaster and teacher.

Denis Owen was a student at Roan Grammar School in Greenwich, which he left when he was 16, but eventually he graduated from Oxford University.

After leaving Roan Grammar, he was employed at the British Museum (Natural History), where he worked in the Bird Room. After a couple of years here he left for National Service. After this, Owen worked from 1951 to 1958 as a Field Assistant at the Edward Grey Institute for Field Ornithology, Oxford University, under its Director, the evolutionary biologist Dr David Lack. Amongst other things, he was responsible for maintaining the records of tits at the Wytham Woods site close to Oxford.

David Lack recommended Owen for a Zoology degree course at Oxford University. By the time Owen graduated, in 1958, he had already written 43 research papers. During this time he met his first wife Jennifer Owen (née Bak) who was also an undergraduate zoologist. The two collaborated on a number of research projects and married following their graduation in 1958. Both moved to the United States to become teaching fellows and PhD students at the University of Michigan.

During four years in the United States, Owen completed his doctoral project on owls and also researched insect ecology, collecting the first New World data on industrial melanism in the peppered moth as well as working on the ecological genetics of spittle bugs.

Owen's appointment as Lecturer in Zoology at the University College of Makerere (now Makerere University), Uganda in 1962 led to a four-year extended visit in Africa, where he studied the ecological genetics of butterflies and snails. Upon leaving Uganda in 1966, he took up the Chair of Zoology at Fourah Bay College, later to become the University of Sierra Leone at the age of 35. His research on butterfly ecology and genetics continued, culminating in his 1971 book, Tropical Butterflies Between 1967–68 he was also Director of a UNESCO Biology Teaching Project for Africa, based in Ghana.

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