Sir John Lawton#

John Lawton studied zoology at the University of Durham, where he completed his PhD in 1969. From Durham he moved to be Demonstrator in Ecology in the Department of Zoology at Oxford for three years, before moving to the Biology Department at the University of York in 1971. He was awarded a Personal Chair at York in 1985. In 1989 he founded, and was appointed Director of, the NERC Centre for Population Biology at Imperial College, Silwood Park, where he remained until 1999. He took up his present post as Chief Executive of NERC in October 1999, but retains his Professorship in an honorary capacity at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

John Lawton has wide scientific interests, but he has focussed on the population dynamics and biodiversity of birds and insects, with emphasis over the last decade of the impacts of global environmental change on wild plants and animals.

He was elected FRS in 1989, awarded a CBE in 1997 and knighted in 2005 for his contributions to ecological science.

He is married to Dot, with two grown up children and five grandchildren.

John Lawton is the author of over 320 scientific papers, and he has publihed or edited five books.