Early career Carr-Saunders remained a year at the
University of Oxford as a
demonstrator in
comparative anatomy. He left in 1910 to join the
University College London where he studied
biometrics under
Karl Pearson, a proponent of Social Darwinism and eugenics. Deciding against natural science, he instead read for the Bar of the Inner Temple. and to temporary
captain on 27 January 1918.
Later career After the
Armistice he returned to the Zoology department of the
University of Oxford, taking an interest in ecological issues, especially
population and
overpopulation. He participated in the
1921 Oxford University Spitsbergen expedition, one of the first Oxford Expeditions to Spitsbergen in the Arctic as main scientists, together with
Julian Huxley. During the expedition he distilled his early ideas on population dynamics and summarized them in a book called
The Population Problem. The book used a
neo-Malthusian argument plus Galton's eugenics as the theoretical framework for a quantitative analysis of population dynamics. The population problem arose -according to Carr-Saunders hypothesis- from the fact of having high reproductive rates among
primitive people with low mental and physical qualities.
Over-population of these
lower races endangered the standard of living of races bearing higher qualities. Unlike
Malthus, he thought that industrial productivity and not food was the main limiting factor in human populations.. The success of his
magnum opus The Population Problem resulted in his appointment to the
Charles Booth Chair of Social Science at the
University of Liverpool in 1923. In 1937, he was appointed to succeed Sir
William Beveridge as Director of the
London School of Economics, and held that post until his retirement in 1955. Carr-Saunders was one of the mentors of the animal ecologist
Charles Elton, greatly influencing Elton's approach toward animal ecology as a "sociology and economy of animals" ==Honours==