David Peakall

David Beaumont Peakall (17 March 1931 – 18 August 2001) was an internationally recognised

PCBs on birds.^[1]

Early years and studies

Peakall was born in

American Ornithologists' Union in 1961 and an Elective Member in 1972.^[2]

Biological Sciences Division. He initially worked on making the Laboratory of Ornithology's Nest Record Card Program accessible to researchers. He also worked to emphasise the importance of spatial and temporal data on bird nesting.^[3]

This led to Peakall working full-time on

PCBs

on birds.

In 1975, Peakall went to

pesticide registration and tissue banking, he added specialists in cytogenetics, heavy metals and biochemical toxicology, and a team to focus on the problems of fish-eating birds of the Great Lakes. He established an aviary and techniques to uncover the physiological mechanisms of pollutant effects observed in the field. He became an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa

.

Peakall's major contribution to the Great Lakes gull work was an egg swap programme between "clean" and "dirty" colonies, to isolate the effect of parental behaviour from that of embryo toxicity. He also participated in analysing the effects on songbirds of spraying

Memorial University in Newfoundland. He retired from CWS in 1991, moving to Wimbledon

, England, a few miles from his childhood home.

Retirement

In retirement, Peakall remained very active in the fields of toxicology and ornithology. For several years he was a visiting fellow at the University of Reading where he lectured in ecotoxicology, co-authored the textbook Principles of Ecotoxicology, and in 1992 became a founding coeditor of the journal Ecotoxicology. In 1996, he co-authored Beyond Silent Spring,^[4] and helped to organise a US Department of Energy-funded international workshop on "Nondestructive Biomarkers in Vertebrates." He organised at least two NATO-funded advanced workshops.