Robert May, Baron May of Oxford

Robert May, Baron May of Oxford
Robert McCredie May, Baron May of Oxford, HonFAIB (8 January 1936 – 28 April 2020) was an Australian scientist who was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, President of the Royal Society, and a professor at the University of Sydney and Princeton University. He held joint professorships at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. He was also a crossbench member of the House of Lords from 2001 until his retirement in 2017.
May was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and an appointed member of the council of the British Science Association. He was also a member of the advisory council for the Campaign for Science and Engineering.
Early life and education
May was born in Sydney on 8 January 1936, to lawyer Henry Wilkinson May and Kathleen Mitchell (née McCredie), who divorced when he was seven years old. His father was of prosperous middle-class Northern Irish origin, and his mother was the daughter of a Scottish engineer. May was educated at Sydney Boys High School. He then attended the University of Sydney, where he studied chemical engineering and theoretical physics (BSc 1956) and received a PhD in theoretical physics in 1959. He was a patron of the Sydney High School Old Boys Union.
Career and research
Career
Early in his career, May developed an interest in animal population dynamics and the relationship between complexity and stability in natural communities. 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 of theoretical ecology through the 1970s and 1980s. He also applied these tools to the study of disease and to the study of biodiversity.
May was Gordon MacKay Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at Harvard University (1959–61) and returned to the University of Sydney (1962) as senior lecturer, reader, and professor (1969–72) in theoretical physics. From 1973 until 1988, he was Class of 1977 Professor of Zoology at Princeton University, serving as chairman of the University Research Board 197788. From 1988 until 1995, he held a Royal Society Research Professorship jointly at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, where he became a fellow of Merton College and a Master of Arts. He was Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government and head of the Office of Science and Technology (1995–2000), and president of the Royal Society (2000–2005).
Public life
May held subsidiary appointments as executive trustee of the Nuffield Foundation, member of the board of the United Kingdom Sports Institute, foundation trustee of the Gates Trust (University of Cambridge), chairman of the board of trustees of the Natural History Museum, trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, independent member of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, trustee of World Wildlife Fund-UK, president of the British Ecological Society, and member of the Committee on Climate Change.
In 1996, May asked Ig Nobel to stop awarding prizes to British scientists because this might lead the public to treat worthwhile research less seriously (see Criticism of Ig Nobel).
Climate change co-operation
Although an atheist 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 to combat climate change, he stated that it was absolutely necessary.
Awards and honours
May was appointed Knight Bachelor in 1996, and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1998. In 2001, on the recommendation of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, he was created a life peer. He was one of the first fifteen peers to be elevated in this manner. After his initial preference for "Baron May of Woollahra" failed an objection from the Protocol Office of the Australian Prime Minister's Department, he chose the style and title Baron May of Oxford, of Oxford in the County of Oxfordshire. He was made a member of the Order of Merit in 2002.
He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977 and to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1979. He became a Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1991, a Foreign Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1992, a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2001, a member of the Academia Europaea in 1994, and Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 2010.
In 2005 he was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2009 Lord May became only the 7th ever Honorary Fellow of the Australian Institute of Building (HonFAIB). He received honorary degrees from universities including Uppsala(1990), Yale (1993), Sydney (1995), Princeton (1996), and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (2003). He was awarded the Weldon Memorial Prize by the University of Oxford (1980), an Award by the MacArthur Foundation (1984), the Medal of the Linnean Society of London (1991), the Marsh Christian Prize (1992), the Frink Medal by the Zoological Society of London (1995), the Crafoord Prize (1996), the Balzan Prize (1998) for Biodiversity and the Copley Medal by the Royal Society (2007) and the Lord Lewis Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry (2008).
Personal life
During his postdoctoral 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, a native of Manhattan. The Mays had a daughter, Naomi.
May died at a nursing home in Oxford of pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer's disease on 28 April 2020, aged 84.
See also
List of presidents of the Royal Society
References
External links
Profile of Robert May: the Recipient of the 2001 Blue Planet Prize
Bush Accused of "Fiddling While World Burns" by Ignoring Climate Change
A commentary on Robert May's request to Ignobel by The Guardian
Speech made at the end of Lord May's presidency of the Royal Society
Audio: Robert May in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum
The Australian Institute of Building
abel.harvard.edu
Bob May: the government scientist with a colourful turn of phrase (Sydney Morning Herald obituary)
1936 births
2020 deaths
Presidents of the Royal Society
Chief Scientific Advisers to HM Government
Australian Fellows of the Royal Society
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
May of Oxford
Crossbench life peers
Australian life peers
Australian Knights Bachelor
Australian members of the Order of Merit
Companions of the Order of Australia
Recipients of the Copley Medal
Presidents of the British Science Association
Australian zoologists
British ecologists
British zoologists
Australian ecologists
Australian atheists
Mathematical ecologists
Theoretical biologists
Members of Academia Europaea
Harvard University faculty
Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Physics
Honorary Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering
Academics of Imperial College London
Fellows of Merton College, Oxford
Princeton University faculty
People educated at Sydney Boys High School
University of Sydney alumni
Academic staff of the University of Sydney
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
British atheists
Fellows of the Royal Society of New South Wales
Trustees of museums
Santa Fe Institute people
Australian physicists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
Life peers created by Elizabeth II
Peers retired under the House of Lords Reform Act 2014