[4] Upon receiving a Demy, Douglas attended Magdalen College, Oxford, to study Natural sciences and Physiology and was eventually awarded a First class honours degree.

[3] Douglas was a pacifist[5] and conscientious objector,[5] so during World War II he served as Scientific Officer in the Ministry of Social Security, conducting research into Animal Behaviour, in a unit that was supervised by Solly Zuckerman.

[4] For the rest of the war period, Douglas was a Research Officer at the Oxford Extra Mural Unit of the Ministry of Home Security.

[4] As part of this war work, Douglas was involved in a Field Survey of Air-Raid Casualties that aimed to understand the mechanisms by which bomb blasts caused injury and death.

The committee appointed the demographer and sociologist, David Glass, to coordinate research and he suggested that Douglas would be a suitable person to conduct the survey.

[4] So when the job offer presented itself to study Obstetrics in relation to the falling birth rate, Douglas jumped at the opportunity; it would later define his whole life's work.

It also showed marked differences in infant survival rates depending on what region of Great Britain the mother was from, and the profound effects of social class on the outcomes of pregnancies.