subject (with a dissertation on population dynamics - foreshadowing a later interest in the history of Darwinism) in 1942. By this time he had taken up a research position with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in the Cambridge Zoological La­ boratory, a position he left in 1946, when he moved to a lectureship in the his­ tory and philosophy of science at University College, London. H. G. Andrewa­ ka and L. C. Birch, in a survey of the history of insect ecology (R. F. Smith, et al. , History of Entomology, 1973), recognise the importance of the works of Crombie (with which they couple the earlier work of Gause) as the principal sti­ mulus for the great interest taken in interspecific competition in the mid 194Os.