Peter Ward was born in Cheshire in 1934. He had a keen interest in natural history from a young age and studied zoology at Liverpool University and Imperial College, London. He took up his first professional post as an entomologist at the West African Stored Products Research Unit in Kano, Nigeria, soon after completing his studies. In 1959 he was appointed research fellow at the zoology department of University College, Ibadan, in Nigeria. The study of the red-billed quelea he completed in this post earned him a PhD from London University in 1963 and was the beginning of his lifelong association with red-billed queleas. After a short time lecturing at Queen Elizabeth College, London, he moved to Singapore to study the tree sparrow and yellow-vented bulbul in the suburban habitat of Singapore Island. His next career move took him to the Anti-Locust Research Centre in London to research methods to reduce cereal crop damage by red-billed queleas. He led research teams in East Africa and Nigeria and acted as advisor to research groups across Africa. In 1976 he moved to the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology at the Monks Wood experimental station in Cambridgeshire. However, he missed the excitement of the African bush and in 1979, less than a year before his death, he moved to Sudan to continue his work on queleas.

Sources:

Jones, P.J. (1981) 'Peter Ward', Ibis 123 (4), pp. 546-547.