John Lennox Monteith

DSc DSC or Dsc may refer to: Education * Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) * District Selection Committee, an entrance exam in India * Doctor of Surgical Chiropody, superseded in the 1960s by Doctor of Podiatric Medicine Educational institutions * Dyal Sin ...

, FRS (3 September 1929 – 20 July 2012) was a British scientist who pioneered the application of physics to biology. He was an authority in the related fields of water management for agricultural production,

soil physics Soil physics is the study of soil's physical properties and processes. It is applied to management and prediction under natural and managed ecosystems. Soil physics deals with the dynamics of physical soil components and their state of matter, ...

micrometeorology Microscale meteorology or micrometeorology is the study of short-lived atmospheric phenomena smaller than mesoscale, about or less. These two branches of meteorology are sometimes grouped together as "mesoscale and microscale meteorology" (MMM) ...

transpiration Transpiration is the process of water movement through a plant and its evaporation from aerial parts, such as leaves, stems and flowers. It is a passive process that requires no energy expense by the plant. Transpiration also cools plants, c ...

, and the influence of the natural environment on field crops, horticultural crops, forestry, and

animal production Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, management, production, nutrition, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. ...

Research

His pioneering work with

Howard Penman Howard Latimer Penman (1909 – 1984) was a British meteorologist. He formulated Penman’s Formula, which is used worldwide by meteorologists and agricultural scientists to assess evaporation rates in different setups (lakes and ponds, lawns, cro ...

evapotranspiration Evapotranspiration (ET) refers to the combined processes which move water from the Earth's surface (open water and ice surfaces, bare soil and vegetation) into the Atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere. It covers both water evaporation (movement of w ...

is applied worldwide as the Penman-Monteith equation. It predicts

and is recommended by the

Food and Agriculture Organization The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; . (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security. Its Latin motto, , translates ...

for calculating irrigation quantities. 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 The Royal Meteorological Society is an organization that promotes academic and public engagement in weather and climate science. Fellows of the Society must possess relevant qualifications, but Members can be lay enthusiasts. It publishes vari ...

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 Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

and elevated levels. When he retired in 1992 a conference on resource capture by crops was organised and a further conference was held in 2008. The American Society of Agronomy also organised a symposium in his honour in 1996. 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.

Career

* 1954

Rothamsted Experimental Station Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founded in 1843. It is located at Harp ...

, Harpenden, Herts, UK * 1967

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

, School of Agriculture, UK * 1987

International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is an international organisation which conducts agricultural research for rural development, headquartered in Patancheru, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, with several ...

, Hyderabad, India * Senior visiting fellow of NERC.

Awards and honours

* Elected Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, 1971 * Elected Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

, 1972 * Awarded

Rank A rank is a position in a hierarchy. It can be formally recognized—for example, cardinal, chief executive officer, general, professor—or unofficial. People Formal ranks * Academic rank * Corporate title * Diplomatic rank * Hierarchy ...

Prize for Human and Animal Nutrition and Crop Husbandry, 1989 for "his elucidation of the physical control of determining crop growth." * Honorary Doctor of Science,

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

, 1989 *

Symons Gold Medal The Symons Gold Medal is awarded biennially by the Royal Meteorological Society for distinguished work in the field of meteorological science. It was established in 1901 in memory of George James Symons, a notable British meteorologist. Recipient ...

of the

, 1994 His nomination for the

reads:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Monteith, John 1929 births British environmental scientists Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society Presidents of the Royal Meteorological Society British hydrologists Academics of the University of Nottingham 2012 deaths