Kenneth Mellanby

Biographical Information
Kenneth Mellanby (died in 1993), "ecologist: born 26 March 1908; First Principal, University College, Ibadan, Nigeria 1947-53; Head, Department of Entomology, Rothamsted Experimental Station 1955-61; First Director, Monks Wood Experimental Station, Huntingdon 1961-74; Vice-President and member of council, Royal Entomological Society of London 1953-56; President, Association for Study of Animal Behaviour 1957-60; Chairman, Council for Environmental Science and Engineering 1981-93; married 1933 Helen Neilson Dow (one daughter; marriage dissolved), 1948 Jean Copeland (one son)...

"Educated at Barnard Castle School, he went on to read Natural Sciences at King's College, Cambridge, before moving in 1930 to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he studied for a PhD on the susceptibility of various parasites of man to desiccation and overheating. ... Pesticides and Pollution (1967) was a balanced approach - an antidote to the horror story of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring - for which he leant heavily on the research of his colleagues. ...."

According to Philip Conford:


 * "The organic movement's most distinguished British ally in the world of ecological science was probably Dr Kenneth Mellanby, who from 1955 to 1961 had been the head of Rothamsted's entomology section. He then became the first Director of Monks Wood Experimental Station in Huntingdonshire, chief research station of the Nature Conservancy. Monks Wood apparently boasted the largest concentration of ecologists in Europe. Mellanby spent thirteen years there, investigating the effects of industrial agriculture on the countryside, and for some years worked closely with the Soil Association, serving on its Council in the early 1970s: Michael Allaby was very friendly with him. His book Pesticides and Pollution (1967) appeared in the prestigious Collins 'New Naturalist' series.”


 * Former Council member, Soil Association

Related Sourcewatch

 * The Nature Conservancy (UK)