At a time of expansion he was able to build up a much larger
At a time of expansion, he was able to build up a much larger department with wide interests. It became internationally known as a centre of ecological research and attracted visitors from many parts of the world.With the needs of students from the tropics particularly in mind, he established an MSc course in ecology, one of the first in Britain, which attracted many overseas students. In 1932 he joined a major expedition to Sarawak, and in 1936 organised and led an expedition to Nigeria.From 1938 to 1949 he was on the staff of the Cambridge University Botany School, and in 1949 was appointed to the chair of botany in the University College of North Wales (now known as the University of Wales, Bangor) and remained there until retirement in 1976. He would fell a narrow strip of forest, and measure each tree fully, with its height in the canopy, in order to elucidate the layered structure of the rain forest. On this he developed a technique of forest description, the “forest profile”, which soon became very widely used.
On starting work for his PhD he was persuaded to use cherry laurel, then a favourite plant of Cambridge plant physiologists, in physiological experiments, but he soon realised that laboratory experimentation was not for him and his thesis was on the ecology of tropical rain forest, work which he had already started while still an undergraduate.In 1929 he was a member of an expedition to Moraballi Creek in Guiana, a major research effort staffed otherwise by experienced workers. With the award of the Coutts-Trotter Studentship he embarked on research, and was elected a Fellow of Trinity in 1933.His early dedication to the study of plants in the field was maintained throughout his life. At the age of eight Paul Richards was already collecting plants He was put in touch with G.C. Druce, who encouraged him and enrolled him in the Botanical Exchange Club, describing him in 1919 as “our youngest member”. By 1920 he was also studying mosses.In 1927 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1931 with first class honours and was awarded the Frank Smart Prize for Botany. His easy style of writing allowed him to produce two successful, more popular, books: the King Penguin Book of Mosses (1950) and The Life of the Jungle (1970).
The latter not only brought out the fascinating complexity of rain forest to the general reader, but emphasised the importance of its conservation.He was born in 1908 at Walton on the Hill, Surrey, the youngest son of H.M. Richards, then medical officer of health for Croydon, but moved to Cardiff and then to London. Sadly, although he had passed the first proofs, he did not live to see it published.
In bryophyte ecology too he produced a synthesis (a chapter in Manual of Bryology, 1932) which opened the way to further work. His later years were devoted to the preparation of an enlarged, completely revised and eagerly awaited new edition. Although many books on the subject have since appeared, it is still widely quoted.