The Lord May of Oxford | |
|---|---|
.jpg) May in 2009 | |
| 59th President of the Royal Society | |
| In office 2000–2005 | |
| Preceded by | Aaron Klug |
| Succeeded by | Martin Rees |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Robert McCredie May (1936-01-08)8 January 1936[1] Sydney,New South Wales, Australia |
| Died | 28 April 2020(2020-04-28) (aged 84) Oxford,Oxfordshire, England |
| Citizenship | Australia |
| Scientific career | |
| Alma mater | University of Sydney |
| Known for | Logistic map,[6] stability-complexity studies[7] |
| Spouse(s) | [1] |
| Awards | |
| Fields | Theoretical ecology |
| Institutions | Imperial College London University of Oxford Harvard University |
| Thesis | Investigations towards an understanding of superconductivity (1959) |
| Doctoral students | |
| Other notable students | Martin Nowak (postdoc)[5] |
| Website | www |
Robert McCredie May, Baron May of Oxford (8 January 1936 – 28 April 2020) was an Australian scientist who wasChief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government,President of the Royal Society,[8] and a professor at theUniversity of Sydney andPrinceton University. He held joint professorships at theUniversity of Oxford andImperial College London. He was also acrossbench member of theHouse of Lords from 2001 until his retirement in 2017.
May was aFellow ofMerton College, Oxford, and an appointed member of the council of theBritish Science Association. He was also a member of the advisory council for theCampaign for Science and Engineering.[9]
May was born in Sydney on 8 January 1936, to lawyer[10] Henry Wilkinson May and Kathleen Mitchell (née McCredie),[11][12] who divorced when he was seven years old.[1][13] His father was of prosperous middle-class Northern Irish origin, and his mother was the daughter of a Scottish engineer.[14] May was educated atSydney Boys High School.[1] He then attended theUniversity of Sydney, where he studiedchemical engineering andtheoretical physics (BSc 1956) and received aPhD intheoretical physics in 1959.[15] He was a patron of the Sydney High School Old Boys Union.[16]
Early in his career, May developed an interest in animalpopulation dynamics and the relationship between complexity and stability innatural communities.[17][18] He was able to make major advances in the field of population biology through the application of mathematical techniques. His work played a key role in the development oftheoretical ecology through the 1970s and 1980s. He also applied these tools to the study of disease and to the study ofbiodiversity.
May was Gordon MacKay Lecturer in Applied Mathematics atHarvard University (1959–61) and returned to theUniversity of Sydney (1962) as senior lecturer, reader, and professor (1969–72) intheoretical physics. From 1973 until 1988, he was Class of 1977 Professor of Zoology atPrinceton University, serving as chairman of the University Research Board 1977–88. From 1988 until 1995, he held aRoyal Society Research Professorship jointly atImperial College London and theUniversity of Oxford, where he became a fellow ofMerton College and aMaster of Arts.[when?] He wasChief Scientific Adviser to HM Government and head of theOffice of Science and Technology (1995–2000), and president of theRoyal Society (2000–2005).[19]
May held subsidiary appointments as executive trustee of theNuffield Foundation, member of the board of theUnited Kingdom Sports Institute, foundation trustee of theGates Trust (University of Cambridge), chairman of the board of trustees of theNatural History Museum, trustee of theRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew, independent member of theJoint Nature Conservation Committee, trustee ofWorld Wildlife Fund-UK, president of theBritish Ecological Society, and member of theCommittee on Climate Change.
In 1996, May askedIg Nobel to stop awarding prizes to British scientists because this might lead the public to treat worthwhile research less seriously (seeCriticism of Ig Nobel).
Although anatheist since age 11, May stated that religion may help society deal with climate change. While referring to what he believed to be a rigid structure of fundamentalist religion, he stated that the co-operational aspects of non-fundamentalist religion may in fact help with climate change. When asked if religious leaders should be doing more to persuade people tocombat climate change, he stated that it was absolutely necessary.[20] May also estimated that there may be approximately 7 million species present in the Earth, both animal and plant combined.
May was appointedKnight Bachelor in 1996,[21] and aCompanion of the Order of Australia in 1998. In 2001, on the recommendation of theHouse of Lords Appointments Commission, he was created alife peer. He was one of the first fifteen peers to be elevated in this manner. After his initial preference for "Baron May ofWoollahra" failed an objection from the Protocol Office of the AustralianPrime Minister's Department, he chose the style and titleBaron May of Oxford, ofOxford in theCounty of Oxfordshire.[22][23] He was made a member of theOrder of Merit in 2002.[24]
He was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977[25] and to the Fellowship of theRoyal Society in 1979. He became a Corresponding Fellow of theAustralian Academy of Science in 1991, a Foreign Member of theUnited States National Academy of Sciences in 1992,[26] a member of theAmerican Philosophical Society in 2001,[27] a member of theAcademia Europaea in 1994, and Fellow of theRoyal Society of New South Wales in 2010.[28]
In 2005 he was appointed an HonoraryFellow of theRoyal Academy of Engineering.[2] In 2009 Lord May became only the 7th ever Honorary Fellow of the Australian Institute of Building (HonFAIB).[29] He received honorary degrees from universities includingUppsala[30](1990),Yale (1993),Sydney (1995),Princeton (1996), and theEidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (2003). He was awarded the Weldon Memorial Prize by theUniversity of Oxford (1980), anAward by theMacArthur Foundation (1984), theMedal of theLinnean Society of London (1991), the Marsh Christian Prize (1992), the Frink Medal by theZoological Society of London (1995), theCrafoord Prize (1996), theBalzan Prize (1998) for Biodiversity and theCopley Medal by theRoyal Society (2007) and theLord Lewis Prize by theRoyal Society of Chemistry (2008).[31]
During hispostdoctoral research at the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics at Harvard University as Gordon MacKay Lecturer in Applied Mathematics, between 1959 and 1961, May met his wife, Judith Feiner,[1] a native ofManhattan.[32][33] The Mays had a daughter, Naomi.[32]
May died at a nursing home in Oxford ofpneumonia complicated byAlzheimer's disease on 28 April 2020, aged 84.[34][35]
Media related toRobert May, Baron May of Oxford at Wikimedia Commons
| Government offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government 1995–2000 | Succeeded by SirDavid King |
| Professional and academic associations | ||
| Preceded by | 59th President of theRoyal Society 2000–2005 | Succeeded by |
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