death_date birth_place nationality honorific_suffix birth_date article_title name occupation
25 february 2002 kenton , middlesex , england british phd 29 march 1929 ken simmons
 kenneth edwin laurence ryder simmons teacher ornithologist
ken simmons

kenneth edwin laurence ryder simmons -lrb- 29 march 1929 -- 25 february 2002 -rrb- was a respected british ornithologist born in kenton , middlesex .
he spent his early childhood in china and went to school in london , wiltshire and worcestershire .
he completed professional training for a teachers ' certificate in 1946/7 and then took up a teaching post in reading .
it was at this time that he took up serious birdwatching and joined the british ornithologists ' union , the royal society for the protection of birds and , a year later , the british trust for ornithology .
during a period of national service from 1948-50 simmons was posted to the suez canal zone , egypt where his observations of birds provided material for later published work .
from 1947 onwards he published many notes and papers on birds .
he became particularly interested in the taxonomic implications of certain simple behaviour patterns and in bird taxonomy generally and was listed in the 1961 directory of zoological taxonomists .
he was also a committee member , joint recorder and chairman of the reading ornithological club .
in february 1962 he moved to ascension island , as the island school master , with his wife marion as his assistant .
although he had intended to spend his spare time on the island writing , he ended spending most of it observing and studying the brown booby `` sula leucogaster '' .
upon their return to england in 1964 both ken and marion decided to give up teaching and ken succeeded in obtaining a leverhulme fellowship enabling him to register , in 1965 , as a postgraduate student at the department of psychology , university of bristol .
in 1967 he was awarded an msc for his ascension island booby studies and in 1970 a phd for work on the great crested grebe .
simmons ' work was widely cited in ornithological circles .
while in bristol he was a founding committee member of the bristol ornithological club .
following his phd he moved to leicester to work with uli weidmann at the department of psychology , university of leicester on duck courtship .
he was also asked to join the editorial board of `` the birds of the western palearctic '' .
he started work on the social pattern and behaviour section in late 1971 , in 1973 he became editor , reducing the hours worked at the university of leicester , then in 1975 src funding allowed him to work full-time on `` the birds of the western palearctic '' .
he was responsible for the voice section , the family summaries and general trouble shooting .
he also spent time writing papers and books and biographical study of edmund selous .
