Gordon Conway
Sir Gordon Richard Conway KCMG FRS FRGS FREng (born 6 July 1938) is an agricultural ecologist and former President of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Royal Geographical Society. He is currently Professor of International Development at Imperial College, London and Director of Agriculture for Impact, a grant funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on European support of agricultural development in Africa.
Sir Gordon Conway | |
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Born | Gordon Richard Conway 6 July 1938 |
Alma mater | Bangor University Cambridge University University of the West Indies University of California, Davis |
Awards | Fellow of the Royal Society (2004) KCMG (2005) Founder's Medal (2017) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Agricultural Ecology |
Institutions | Imperial College London University of California, Davis The Rockefeller Foundation |
Thesis | A Basic Model of Insect Reproduction and its Implications for Pest Control (1969) |
Website | www3 |
Education
Conway was educated at the Bangor University, Cambridge University and the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of California, Davis.
Career
In the early 1960s, working in Sabah, North Borneo, he became one of the pioneers of sustainable agriculture and integrated pest management. From 1970 to 1986, he was Professor of Environmental Technology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. He then directed the sustainable agriculture program of the International Institute for Environment and Development in London before becoming Representative of the Ford Foundation in New Delhi from 1988 to 1992. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex and Chair of the Institute of Development Studies.[1][2][3][4][5]
He was elected the eleventh President of The Rockefeller Foundation in April 1998, a position he held until 2004.[6] From 2004 to 2009 he was also President of the Royal Geographical Society.[7] He took up his appointment as the UK Department for International Development's Chief Scientific Adviser in January 2005, serving until 2009.[8][9][10][11][12]
Conway now works at Imperial College London and headed the Bill & Melinda Gates-funded project Agriculture for Impact looking into ways to increase and enhance agricultural development for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was an independent advocacy initiative, and was based at Imperial College London and was supported through the Agriculture for Impact Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.[13] According to the organization's website, the initiative ran until the summer of 2016.[14] Agriculture for Impact also convened the Montpellier Panel, a group of international experts from the fields of agriculture, trade, policy, ecology and global development. He is a Deputy Lieutenant for East Sussex.
Honours and awards
- June 2004 awarded an honorary degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University.
- 2004: elected a Fellow of the Royal Society[15][16]
- 2005: invested Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (KCMG)
- 2005: listed on The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll
- 2008: elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering[17]
- 2017: awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society [18]
Books
He has authored:
- Unwelcome Harvest: agriculture and pollution (Earthscan, Island Press) ISBN 1-85383-036-4
- The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for all in the 21st century (Penguin and University Press, Cornell) ISBN 0-8014-8610-6[19]
- Islamophobia: a challenge for us all (The Runnymede Trust) ISBN 0-902397-98-2.
He co-authored:
- Science and Innovation for Development (UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS))
- One Billion Hungry: Can we Feed the World?' was published in October 2012.[20]
References
- he Rockefeller Foundation and Plant Biotechnology 24 June 1999
- The Voice of Reason in the Global Food Fight 21 February 2000
- Dr. Gordon Conway
- The world in microcosm: an interview with Gordon Conway 8 December 2004
- Biotechnology and Hunger Archived 4 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine 8 May 2003
- "100 Years: The Rockefeller Foundation: Biography: Sir Gordon Conway". The Rockefeller Archive Center. Archived from the original on 28 April 2014. Retrieved 2 April 2014.
- President
- The ideas interview: Gordon Conway 24 October 2005
- Sir Gordon Conway interview Archived 27 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine Summer 2006
- Technology adoption: the true measure of success 1 May 2006
- "Prof Gordon Conway". Archived from the original on 14 December 2007. Retrieved 8 September 2007.
- Sir Gordon Conway KCMG FRS
- "Agriculture for Impact". Imperial College London. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
- "Agriculture for Impact About". ag4impact.org. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
- "Gordon Conway". Royal Society. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
- http://www.imperial.ac.uk/college.asp?P=5260
- "List of Fellows".
- "Professor Sir Gordon Conway honoured with top geographical prize". Imperial College London. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
- Simmonds, N. W. (1998). "Review of The Doubly Green Revolution by Gordon Conway". Nature. 391 (6663): 139. doi:10.1038/34337. ISSN 0028-0836. S2CID 5889833.
- Stewart, Zachary; Francis, Charles (2013). "Review of One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? by Gordon Conway". Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. 37 (8): 964–967. doi:10.1080/21683565.2013.809397. ISSN 2168-3565. S2CID 155545491.
External links
- Prof Sir Gordon Conway, KCMG, DL, FRS at Debrett's People of Today
- "Professor Sir Gordon Conwat - "One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?"". YouTube. SciencexMedia at Global Development. 15 October 2012.
- "Sir Gordon Conwat: Feeding the World: Is Sustainable Intensification the Answer?". YouTube. SAIS events. 10 September 2014.