David E. Davis (July 18, 1913 – October 31, 1994) was an ecologist and animal behaviorist noted for being the "founder of modern rat studies".
He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College in 1935, then a Master of Science and PhD at Harvard University in 1939.
Davis completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago, where he studied the behavior of chickens under L. V.
[2] From 1941 to 1943, Davis investigated the hosts of yellow fever in Brazil for the Rockefeller Foundation.
[2] For 13 years, Davis worked as an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, where he started the Rodent Ecology Project.