Dr Norman Myers CMG (24 August, 1934- ) is a British environmentalist and authority on biodiversity. He is a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.

Early life

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Myers was born in Clitheroe, Lancashire and studied at Keble College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1958 with a B.A. in French and German. He spent two years as a District Officer in Kenya, and taught French and English at the Delamere School for Boys, Nairobi between 1960 and 1966. During that time, he led a number of parties of boys from the school on ascents of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya and at one point he held the record for the fastest ascent of the former.

Myers abandoned the relatively stable life of a schoolteacher in order to make his way as a professional photographer of African wildlife, and thence to an additional career as a freelance lecturer on the subject with an increasing interest in environmental matters. He went back to college and obtained a Ph.D from Berkeley in 1973.

Research projects

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With funding from a number of bodies such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Royal Society, NASA, etc., Norman Myers began to probe areas such as the mass extinction of species and the problems of tropical deforestation, and eventually developed the concept of the biodiversity hotspot. More recently, he has written about climate refugees and the consequences of the collapse of Enron.

Selected awards

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• Gold Medal, World Wildlife Fund, 1983
• Gold Medal of the New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society), 1986
• Sasakawa Prize of the United Nations Environment Programme, 1995
• Blue Planet Prize, 2001

External links

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• 2001 Blue Planet Prize recipient profile

Bibliography

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British environmentalists | Companions of St Michael and St George | 1934 births | Living people | Natives of Lanacashire