Richard Laws - obituary - Telegraph The successful recovery of both South Georgia and the Falklands by June had an enormous impact on the fortunes of the BAS. Margaret Thatcher decided it was in Britain's interest to remain a major presence in the South Atlantic and Antarctica and that one of the routes to achieving this should be in science. She directed that the BAS's operating budget be doubled and a major programme of capital investment be carried out. As a result, by the early 1990s BAS had been transformed into a highly professional organisation, leading the world in Antarctic science. Steel helmets abandoned by Argentine armed forces who surrendered at Goose Green in 1982 (PA) A key result of all this activity was the discovery, in 1984, by the BAS team of atmospheric scientists at the Halley Bay base, of the depletion of the ozone layer over the South Pole - a discovery which jolted the world into a new awareness of man's potential to wreck the planet. In 1989, when the leader of the opposition, Neil Kinnock, attempted to belittle Mrs Thatcher's claim in an interview to have intervened to save the BAS's funding, Laws leapt to her defence, revealing that she had intervened, not once but twice, to save the Survey from cuts that would have put its work at risk - once after the Falklands conflict, and again in 1986 when the NERC had made a change in funding rules which again threatened its work. "It really was a personal, individual appreciation of the problem, when it had been put to her, that led her to intervene," he recalled, "and I felt extremely grateful."" Richard Maitland Laws was born on April 23 1926 at Whitley Bay, Northumberland, and educated at Dame Allan's School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, from where he won a Scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he later became a research scholar and honorary fellow. Late in 1947, within a few months of gaining a First in Zoology, Laws sailed south as a biologist with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (later BAS), in a team led by Sir Vivian Fuchs. Fuchs put Laws in charge of the station on Signey Island in the South Orkney Islands, where he was to study the biology of the southern elephant seal. Southern Elephant Seal pup, South Georgia Island (ALAMY) He spent two years at Signy before returning to Cambridge to start writing up the results of the most comprehensive study to have been made of any species of seal - and perhaps of any large mammal in the wild - until that time. In 1951 Laws went south for a further year with the FIDS, this time in charge of the station at Grytviken, South Georgia, to continue his work on the elephant seal, looking in particular at possible measures to conserve the population in the face of exploitation of the seals for their oil. He devised a management plan for the industry which was implemented successfully until sealing on the island ceased with the closure of the whaling station in 1964. During the course of this work Laws found that the age of a seal (and indeed many other mammals) can be accurately assessed from the study of growth rings in the teeth - a discovery that revolutionised studies of the population dynamics of mammals. After taking his PhD in 1953, Laws joined the staff of the National Institute of Oceanography, and in the same year returned to the Antarctic for a season, this time as a biologist and whaling inspector in the factory ship Balaena. He continued his research on whales until 1961 and was the first scientist to suggest that the reduction in the population of fin whales through whaling had led to an increase in their growth rate and decrease in their average age at maturity - a finding that is still a matter of debate. In 1961 Laws transferred his interest from large marine mammals to large terrestrial mammals, and from Antarctica to East Africa. He worked in Africa for the next eight years, initially as director of the Nuffield Unit of Tropical Animal Ecology in Uganda and later as first director of the Tsavo Research Project in Kenya. His own research concerned the biology and management of hippopotamus and elephant populations. In Elephants and their Habitats (1975) he and his co-authors put forward the controversial, but now generally accepted, idea that culling is essential for the proper management of the animals. Southern Elephant Seal (ALAMY) Laws returned to BAS in 1969, as head of its Life Sciences Division, succeeding to the directorship of the whole organisation in 1973. Despite the burden of administrative duties, he continued to play a leading role in scientific forums, helping to draft conventions for the preservation of marine life and editing major works on Mammals of the Sea (1978-82) and Antarctic Ecology (1984). He also published a more personal assessment of challenges facing the region in Antarctic: the last Frontier (1989), in which he expressed cautious optimism that within the Antarctic Treaty system the problems of safeguarding the environment could be solved. On his retirement from the Survey in 1987, Laws took over full-time as master of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, having already served two years part-time in this capacity. From the start he took a characteristically firm hold on college affairs, in the face of reservations from some members of the strongly religious foundation about his professed agnosticism. But the college flourished under a master who also took an active part in university affairs and in outside organisations including the Zoological Society of London, of which he was secretary from 1984 to 1988. Laws was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980 and appointed CBE in 1983. He was awarded the Bruce Memorial Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1954, the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society in 1965 and the Polar Medal in 1976. An accomplished water colourist, he was also a member of the Society of Wildlife Artists. In 1954 Richard Laws married Maureen Holmes, with whom he had three sons. Richard Laws, born April 23 1926, died October 6 2014