Reginald Frederick Lawrance, arachnologist, known as "Lawrie" by his colleagues, received his education at St Andrew's College, Grahamstown, during 1908-1913 and matriculated at Tulbach High School in 1915. He then studied at the South African College (from 1918 the University of Cape Town), but his studies were interrupted by World War I (1914-1918). He was on active service as an infantryman in France for two years, but was wounded in 1918. Continuing his studies he graduated as Bachelor of Arts (BA) at the University of Cape Town in 1921. The next year he was appointed at the South African Museum as assistant in Arachnida, Myriapoda, Amphibia and Reptilia by Dr Louis Peringuey, the museum's director. During the next few years he undertook an expedition to Mozambique (1923), where he often travelled by donkey wagon, and undertook three collecting expeditions of three months each during 1923, 1924 and 1925 into some remote parts in the north of South West Africa (now Namibia). The extensive collections of arachnids (scorpions, spiders, mites and ticks) he made formed the basis of his thesis, Arachnid fauna of South-West Africa, for which the University of Cape Town awarded him the degree Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in 1928. He also studied host-parasite relationships and in 1935 collected in Mauritius with Professor T. A. Stephenson's expedition.
Lawrence left the South African Museum in 1935 for an appointment as Director of the Natal Museum from the first of July that year, succeeding Dr Ernest Warren*. He held this position for thirteen years and during these years gave priority to his research. In 1936 he described the spiders collected during the Vernay-Lang Kalahari Expedition in the Annals of the Transvaal Museum, followed by several papers in which he described the spiders of KwaZulu-Natal. He made a systematic and prolonged study of the micro-fauna in the humus of the indigenous forests, work that resulted in many papers on the Arachnida and Myriapoda. He also pioneered the study of mites and did more than any other to promote and systematize knowledge of South African arachnids. His duties as director did not appeal to him and at the age of 50 he resigned as director to devote himself to research at the Natal Museum with research grants from the CSIR. His most important and comprehensive publication, The biology of the cryptic fauna of the forests with special reference to South Africa, appeared in 1953. That same year he rejoined the staff of the Natal Museum as senior professional officer, which allowed him to continue with his research without administrative duties. In this position he was able to extend his collecting to include Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Mauritius and Madagascar. He also continued as editor of the Annals of the Natal Museum, a duty he had assumed in 1935 and performed until 1964. He retired from his post in 1964, settled in Grahamstown and then in Port Alfred, and continued his research at the Albany Museum. Altogether he was the author of over 200 scientific publications, many of which he illustrated with pen drawings. In addition to spiders he described scorpions and Sopulgida, including the habits of live specimens. Among others he found cave-dwelling false scorpions and surveyed South African Pedipalpi (an order of the Arachnida). While most of his papers were taxonomic, he also dealt with the zoogeography, ecology and biology of arthropods. When already in his late eighties he published The centipedes and millipedes of southern Africa: A guide (1984).
Lawrence was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa in 1935. He served as president of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa in 1953. In 1956 he was awarded the South Africa Medal (gold) of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science. At his retirement the Natal Museum published a festschrift in his honour. In 1973 he was awarded the medal of the Zoological Society of South Africa. The next year he was elected as joint vice-president of the governing committee of the Centre International de Documentation Arachnologique (CIDA). He was elected an honorary member of the American Arachnological Society in 1985. He had a reserved nature, but his close friends found him to have a warm personality. He was married to Professor Ella Pratt-Yule, founder of the Department of Psychology at the University of Natal, and they had two sons.
