Happy accidents: the making
of a marvellous man
philosophy
Lord (Robert) May interview and photography: Alison Muir
I
n a recent speech to policymakers in Berlin, world
leader in mathematical biology, Australian-born
Lord May of Oxford (BSc ’57 PhD ’60) said: “Small
actions now are disproportionately important. They are
more important than bigger actions later because of the
non-linearity of the process we are talking about.”
What he and the policymakers were talking about –
and what Australia is talking about with renewed vigour
since the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol – is climate
change. Lord (Robert) May – “call me Bob” – whose first
choice of title for his 2001 life peerage was Lord May of
Woollahra (vetoed by Australian government protocol,
sadly) has made deceptively simple yet potentially
world-shaking pronouncements the habit of a lifetime.
President of the Royal Society of London from
2000-2005, former chief scientific adviser to the British
Government and a professor at Sydney, Harvard,
Princeton, Oxford and the Imperial College, London,
Lord May graduated from the University of Sydney in
1959 with a doctorate in theoretical physics. Chemical
engineering had been his original choice but as he pointed
out in November 2007 when he delivered the keynote
lecture at the Lowy Institute (he sits on its advisory
committee), his life has been “a series of accidents.”
“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I left Sydney
Boys’ High,” says May. “The careers advisor said I should
be a lawyer as we had a rather good debating team, and
my family wanted me to do medicine. However, I had a
very influential science teacher and it was partly because
of him – and because I wanted to do something practical
– that I enrolled in first year chemical engineering.”
Young Bob May loved puzzles and games and thought
it would be “fun” to sit the same exams as his friends.
History doesn’t record what they thought when he
topped maths and chemistry and came third in physics.
“I hadn’t studied for physics,” he says cheerfully but
adds that he won a ₤100 prize – one contingent on him
completing second year physics and chemistry. “The sheer
accident of that meant I studied second year chemical
engineering and physics.” He “did pretty well”.
By third year, May decided to major in pure
maths, applied maths and physics. “Then the people
in [the School of] Physics were very keen that I do
the Honours year and that’s how it happened.”
Science is fun
Bob May lecturing
at the Harry Messel
International Science
School, circa 1971
26 SAM Spring 08
May is convinced that anyone planning to study
science should want to do it because it looks like
“fun”. This was exactly how he viewed his chance
to work with eminent Canadian-born physicist Harry
Messel, then running the School of Physics.
“Sydney University was an extraordinary place to be
in the 1950s,” he says, recalling how Messel, one of the
first to seek research funds from corporate and private
sponsors, ended up in a poker game with Sir Frank
Packer and other potential donors. Not long into the game
Messel was dealt a royal flush but instead of scooping
the pot, he kept his mouth shut and quietly discarded
the winning hand. “He thought it would not be very
helpful if he won,” May reports with an impish grin.
At the time, “Harry and his mates” were working
on the hot topic of superconductivity and were
having such a good time that May decided to join in
the fun and do his PhD in theoretical physics. One
of Messel’s “mates”, Robbie Schafroth, became his
PhD supervisor. When Schafroth was offered the
foundation chair at the University of Geneva, he
asked May to join him as his assistant. A short time
later, however, Schafroth was killed in a plane crash.
May took off for Harvard to do a post-doctorate.
It was while at Harvard that he met his wife, Judith,
and with his post-doctorate under his belt, the pair flew
home to Sydney. They married in the summer of 1962 and
built a house in Lane Cove. For the next 10 years May was
Professor of Theoretical Physics at Sydney University.
Animal dynamics
Drawn to Charles Birch, the main figure for founding
social responsibility in science in Australia, May says it
was during this time that he literally “blundered” into
ecology. “I was trying to find out what I was being socially
responsible about, when I read Ecology Resource Management
by Ken Watt and began thinking about applying
mathematics to ecological problem solving,” he says.
Birch didn’t think “this theoretical stuff” would
be of any use but rather than dismissing it out
of hand, he suggested May talk to Princeton’s
famous ecologist Robert H. MacArthur.
“Again it was just an extraordinary lucky accident
because this was at a time when some of those in
ecology had begun to frame questions in the style of
theoretical physics, such as the structure of the food web,
or what determines the relative abundance of species
within a community,” May remembers. “For example,
why were there six species of warblers in the trees of
Vermont and not 60 or just one.” MacArthur, he says,
was a leader in framing these questions. “But none of
them had the box of tricks to handle it,” he adds.
None that is, until May came along. Rather than
embark on an 18-month sabbatical to study astrophysics
in Britain, May went to Princeton. Terminally ill with
renal cancer, MacArthur, 42, had only a few months
SAM Spring 08 27
He created
the new
biology field
of “chaotic
dynamics”
to live. Within an hour of their meeting, he offered
May the job as his successor. Thus, as a result of yet
another “accident”, May became Professor of Zoology
at Princeton for the next 16 years, where, using his
skills in theoretical physics and mathematics, he
created the new biology field of “chaotic dynamics”. By
using mathematical modeling, May not only revealed
the fluctuating dynamics of animal populations but
contributed greatly to the formulation of environmental
policies and how best to manage different ecosystems.
“If you look backwards to the theory of evolution, there’s
a wonderful phrase in one of Darwin’s letters in which he
bemoans the fact that he didn’t have maths,” says May.
HIV and AIDS
Leaving the USA in 1988, May took up professorships
at the Imperial College, London, and Oxford University,
where he continued his research into mathematical
biology, analysing the conditions under which viruses
and bacteria affect host populations. The results he
obtained impacted a broad spectrum of science in the
public health sector, ranging from genetic research into
disease carriers to strategies for dealing with parasites.
In addition he investigated the spread of AIDS and
offered effective proposals for policies to slow the
spread of HIV, AIDS and other contagious diseases.
“Ecologists like more romantic things – preferably
things with fur and feathers – rather than looking down a
microscope and thinking about diseases,” he says. “But
my colleague, Roy Anderson, and I were interested in
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Professor David Day, Dean of Science
28 SAM Spring 08
The Faculty of Science
the degree to which infectious disease might affect the
numerical abundance and geographical distribution of
animals and plants. That led us back to thinking about
humans and their engagement with infectious disease.”
May and Anderson published the world’s first estimate
of HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa in 1991 but cautions
that understanding the exact pathogenesis of HIV is still
some way off. “We understand how individual molecules
act, how the virus interacts with the immune system cells,
and we can describe it at a molecular level. But we still
don’t understand how lots of strains of HIV interact with
lots of strains of the immune system cells. We are probably
going to need to do this before we have a vaccine.”
While many would regard the USA as the number one
leader in science, May disputes this, particularly in regard
to AIDS research. “Australia is one of the leaders here
and from the beginning looked at the science and did
not befuddle it with faith-based doctrinaire prejudices,”
he says, citing the US government’s opposition to needle
distribution programs and the distribution of condoms.
It is more
valid, he
believes, to
measure the
health of
ecosystems in
conventional
GDP terms
Climate change
From his own research as well as his work as Scientific
Adviser to the UK Government from 1995-2000 and his
time as President of the Royal Society, May is well aware
of the problems facing the world from climate change, new
and re-emerging diseases and the loss of biological diversity.
“Ahead of us are dangerous times,” he warns. “Many of
these threats are not yet immediate, yet their non-linear
character is such that we need to be acting today.”
Examining the different arguments put forward by
conservationists in their bid to save various creatures from
Above left: Lord May
and Bob May above
extinction, he dismisses claims that today’s flora and fauna
are the raw stuff of tomorrow’s biotech industry. Instead he
contends that in the future scientists will begin designing
breakthrough medicines and biotech products from the
molecule up rather than go bio-prospecting for them.
It is more valid, he believes, to measure the health of
ecosystems in conventional GDP terms. “Attempts are
now being made to do this but we still don’t understand
enough about how ecosystems are structured, how they
function, or what happens when we take bits out of them
or put new bits into them unintentionally,” he says. He
quotes one of the founding fathers of the conservation
movement, Aldo Leopold, who said that the first rule
of intelligent tinkering “was to keep all the pieces”.
May cites the 2001 United Nations-sponsored
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (www.
milleniumassassment.org) which grouped ecosystem
services under 25 broad headings to find out what sort
of shape they were in. With five of the categories it was
hard to say. With three associated with human food
production, they had actually improved. Worryingly,
however, the remaining 17 were all deemed to be in
serious trouble. But while May believes this creates
a compelling argument for stewardship, he points
out that “stewardship is a motive that comes more
comfortably with the luxury of the comfortable life. If
you are someone struggling to feed your family in the
developing world it may be a less powerful motive.”
He pauses, then flashes a quick smile. “As a
scientist, though, it is not a question of whether or
not I care about these things. I work on the problem
not out of some sort of motive to be a good person
but simply because they are good problems.” SAM
SAM Spring 08 29