Background
Ratcliffe was born a British citizen in Calcutta, India.
Ratcliffe was born a British citizen in Calcutta, India.
He was educated at Berkhamsted School and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and at Princeton University in the United States of America.
After a short period working in London with the Empire Marketing Board, in 1929 he was brought to Australia by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to study flying-foxes in northern New South Wales and Queensland, afterwards returning to Britain to work in the zoology department at the University of Aberdeen. However, he returned to Australia permanently in 1935, working with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and its successor the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, on such problems as wind erosion, termites and rabbit control. Ratcliffe retired from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in 1969.
He died in Canberra the following year of a cerebral haemorrhage.