John Monteith
| John Lennox Monteith | |
|---|---|
 A portrait of John Lennox Monteith (date unknown) | |
| Born | September 3, 1929 |
| Died | July 20, 2012 (aged 82) |
| Occupation | Scientist |
| Years active | 1954-1992 |
| Known for | Application of physics in biology |
John Lennox Monteith DSc, FRS (3 September 1929 – 20 July 2012) was a British scientist who pioneered the application of physics to biology.[1] He was an authority in the related fields of water management for agricultural production, soil physics, micrometeorology, transpiration, and the influence of the natural environment on field crops, horticultural crops, forestry, and animal production.
His pioneering work with Howard Penman on evapotranspiration is applied worldwide as the Penman-Monteith equation. It predicts evapotranspiration and is recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization for calculating irrigation quantities.[1] Monteith's research on the role of the environment in agriculture, the physics of crop microclimate, physiology of crop growth and yield, radiation climatology heat balance in animals, and instrumentation for measuring physical and physiological variables in agriculture has been published in journals throughout the world.
He was President of the Royal Meteorological Society from 1978 to 1980. In his presidential address in 1980 he advised colleagues that unless they could understand how crop yields were determined by weather events, they would have little hope of predicting how crop yields would vary as a result of global warming and elevated CO2 levels.[2][3]
When he retired in 1992 a conference on resource capture by crops was organised and a further conference was held in 2008.[4] The American Society of Agronomy also organised a symposium in his honour in 1996.[5] In an obituary by researchers at Nottingham it was noted it was "impossible to quantify" the impact of his research but that his influence was major judging by the large number of researchers that he supervised who held senior positions in organisations around the world.[5]
Career
- 1954 Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, Herts, UK[1]
- 1967 University of Nottingham, School of Agriculture, UK[1]
- 1987 International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Hyderabad, India[1]
- Senior visiting fellow of NERC.
Awards
- Elected Fellow of the Royal Society, 1971[1]
- Awarded Rank Prize for Human and Animal Nutrition and Crop Husbandry, 1989 for "his elucidation of the physical control of determining crop growth."[6]
- Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Edinburgh, 1989[1]
Publications
- Principles of Environmental Physics; JL Monteith, M Unsworth ISBN 0-7131-2931-X (four editions published in 1973, 1990, 2008 and 2013)[7]
- Monteith, J. L. (1965). "Evaporation and environment". Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology 19: 205–234. PMID 5321565.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 "John Lennox Monteith". The Herald. 2012-09-06. Retrieved 2013-11-02.
- ↑ Carter, T. R. (2013). "Agricultural Impacts: Multi-model yield projections". Nature Climate Change 3 (9): 784. doi:10.1038/nclimate1995.
- ↑ Monteith, J. L. (2007). "Climatic variation and the growth of crops". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 107 (454): 749–774. doi:10.1002/qj.49710745402.
- ↑ Sparkes, D. (2009). "Preface". Journal of Experimental Botany 60 (7): 1897. doi:10.1093/jxb/erp124.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Ong, C.; Black, C. (2012). "John Monteith". Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 166-167: A1. doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2012.10.012.
- ↑ "Prizes awarded by the Human and Animal Nutrition and Crop Husbandry Fund". Rank Prize Funds.
- ↑ John Monteith; Mike Unsworth (26 July 2013). Principles of Environmental Physics: Plants, Animals, and the Atmosphere. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-386993-7.
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