Hardy, SirAlisterClavering

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Hardy, SirAlisterClavering (1896–1985)A British zoologist, who specialized in studies of plankton, insects, and evolutionary processes. Following employment at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Fisheries Laboratory, Lowestoft, in 1924 he was appointed chief zoologist to the Discovery expedition, which studied whales in Antarctic waters. During this voyage he invented the continuous plankton recorder, a device that made possible the establishment of the most comprehensive monitoring system in the world. In 1928 he was appointed professor of zoology (and in 1931 also of oceanography) at University College Hull; in 1942 regius professor of natural history at the University of Aberdeen; and in 1945 Linacre professor of zoology at the University of Oxford, becoming an emeritus professor on his formal retirement in 1961. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1940 and knighted in 1957.

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