Robert May, Baron May of Oxford

The Right Honourable
The Lord May of Oxford
OM AC FRS HonFREng FAA FTSE FRSN
May in 2009
59th President of the Royal Society
In office
2000–2005
Preceded byAaron Klug
Succeeded byMartin Rees
Personal details
Born
Robert McCredie May

(1936-01-08)8 January 1936[1]
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Died28 April 2020(2020-04-28) (aged 84)
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
CitizenshipAustralia
Alma materUniversity of Sydney
Known forLogistic map,[6] stability-complexity studies[7]
Spouse(s)
Judith Feiner, Lady May
​
​
(m. 1962)​
[1]
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsTheoretical ecology
InstitutionsImperial College London
University of Oxford
Harvard University
ThesisInvestigations towards an understanding of superconductivity (1959)
Doctoral students
Other notable studentsMartin Nowak (postdoc)[5]
Websitewww.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/may_r.htm

Robert McCredie May, Baron May of Oxford (8 January 1936 – 28 April 2020) was an Australian scientist who was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, President of the Royal Society,[8] 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.[9]

  1. ^ a b "MAY OF OXFORD". Who's Who. Vol. 2017 (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ "List of Fellows". raeng.org.uk. Royal Academy of Engineering.
  3. ^ Sugihara, George; May, Robert (1990). "Nonlinear forecasting as a way of distinguishing chaos from measurement error in time series". Nature. 344 (6268): 734–741. Bibcode:1990Natur.344..734S. doi:10.1038/344734a0. PMID 2330029. S2CID 4370167.
  4. ^ Sugihara, George; May, Robert; Ye, Hao; Hsieh, Chih-hao; Deyle, Ethan; Fogarty, Michael; Munch, Stephan (2012). "Detecting Causality in Complex Ecosystems". Science. 338 (6106): 496–500. Bibcode:2012Sci...338..496S. doi:10.1126/science.1227079. PMID 22997134. S2CID 19749064.
  5. ^ Tilman, D.; May, R. M.; Lehman, C. L.; Nowak, M. A. (1994). "Habitat destruction and the extinction debt". Nature. 371 (6492): 65. Bibcode:1994Natur.371...65T. doi:10.1038/371065a0. S2CID 4308409.
  6. ^ Gravel, Dominique; Massol, François; Leibold, Mathew A. (2016). "Stability and complexity in model meta-ecosystems". Nature Communications. 7: 12457. Bibcode:2016NatCo...712457G. doi:10.1038/ncomms12457. PMC 4999499. PMID 27555100.
  7. ^ May, Robert M. (18 August 1972). "Will a Large Complex System be Stable?". Nature. 238 (5364): 413–414. Bibcode:1972Natur.238..413M. doi:10.1038/238413a0. PMID 4559589. S2CID 4262204.
  8. ^ Bradbury, Jane (2000). "Sir Robert May: A new face at the Royal Society". The Lancet. 356 (9227): 406–736. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)73556-X. PMID 10972381. S2CID 34829440.
  9. ^ "Advisory Council of the Campaign for Science and Engineering". Retrieved 11 February 2011.