My buddy Andrew Packard, who has died aged 94, was a polymath-scientist and naturalist. His main scientific contribution involved his work on octopuses, by which he was engaged for many of his life.
Andrew’s examine into why cephalopods change color in advanced patterns demonstrated that it was not nearly camouflage however methods of speaking and expressing emotions.
He was very essential of what he referred to as the genetic determinists, who one way or the other “missed the magic” of nature. He understood the speculation of evolution as being about organisms as a complete and never simply genes, and he argued that modern evolutionary principle, which is concentrated on genes, fails to take note of emotions (have an effect on) and the position of altruism that may solely be noticed on the stage of interactions between organisms inside species. This different understanding of evolution, he advised, was way more in step with Darwin’s unique concepts.
Andrew was born in Sedbergh, Cumbria, to Katharine (nee Johnson), a nurse, and Eric, a trainer who later turned a vicar. He was educated at Gordonstoun, initially in Wales to the place the varsity was evacuated through the second world warfare (and when his mother and father each have been on the workers as chaplain and matron), after which in Scotland when the varsity returned north after the warfare ended. He accomplished nationwide service within the navy after which studied zoology at Pembroke School, Oxford.
Andrew’s first job was a lectureship in zoology on the College of New Zealand in Auckland. In 1959 he was invited to hitch the workers in Naples on the Stazione Zoologica. He then joined the College of Edinburgh in 1971, first as lecturer and later as reader in physiology, the place college students are stated to have been “entranced” by his lectures. He took early retirement from Edinburgh in 1988, partly as a protest in opposition to training cuts and the beginnings of bureaucratic workers evaluation rules, and accepted a chair in zoology on the College of Naples, describing himself as a “refugee from Thatcher”. Andrew additionally labored within the US; in Berkeley within the Nineteen Sixties and later Stanford.
Amongst different accomplishments, Andrew had a glacier in Antarctica named after him following a organic expedition in 1958; he was a founding father of the Scottish Greens; he labored with Jacques Cousteau on his documentaries, advising him on cephalopod behaviour; climbed mountains with Sir Edmund Hillary, and he wrote a number of youngsters’s books, together with Mr Spindles and the Spiders, revealed in 1961. He beloved sports activities, particularly cricket; and he was an achieved draughtsman and watercolourist. He was additionally terribly charming, and great firm.
His two marriages, to Brigitta (nee Bayer) in 1973 and to Ann (nee Davidson) in 1982, resulted in divorce. The love of his life was the artist Susanna Linhart, whom he had recognized from the Nineteen Sixties. They entered a civil partnership shortly earlier than she died in 2021. He spent his final three many years with Susanna in La Garde-Freinet, within the Côte d’Azur space.
Andrew is survived by his sons, Ivan, from his relationship with Susanna, and Sasha and Kolje, from his first marriage, and by grandchildren, Natasha, Lucy, Emilia, Luis, Fergus and Lornad.
