Edward Max Nicholson
Max Nicholson | |
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Born | Edward Max Nicholson 12 July 1904 World Wildlife Fund |
Edward Max Nicholson (12 July 1904 – 26 April 2003) was a pioneering environmentalist, ornithologist and internationalist, and a founder of the World Wildlife Fund.[1]
Early life
Max Nicholson, as he was known to all, was born in
He was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria and then Hertford College, Oxford from 1926, winning scholarships to both. At Oxford, he read history and visited Greenland and British Guiana as a founder member of the Oxford University Exploration Club. At Oxford, he organized bird counts and censuses on the University's farm at Sanford.[1] In 1928, Nicholson created and managed the first national birdwatch survey, a survey of the grey heron.[3]
Ornithology and conservation
Nicholson already had published his first work in 1926, Birds in England, and had three similar books published soon after. In The Art of Bird-Watching (1931), he discussed the potential of co-operative birdwatching to inform the conservation debate. This led, in 1932, to the foundation of the British Trust for Ornithology, of which he was the first treasurer and later chairman (1947–1949). In 1947–1948, with the then director general of the United Nations' scientific and education organisation UNESCO, Julian Huxley, he was involved in forming the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN) (now International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)).
In 1949, he oversaw Part 3 of The
In 1952, while in
From 1951 to 1960, he was the senior editor of "British Birds" and was the chief editor of The
Other activities
Nicholson's 1931 essay A National Plan for Britain led to the formation of the influential policy think tank Political and Economic Planning (PEP), now the Policy Studies Institute. Nicholson had strong ideas on how a country should be run and wrote a book "The System".
Nicholson joined the civil service in 1940, during World War II working for the Ministry of Shipping, then the Ministry of War Transport, attending conferences at Quebec and Cairo, and was with Winston Churchill at the post-war peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam. From 1945 until 1952, he was private secretary to Herbert Morrison, the Deputy Prime Minister. He also chaired the committee for 1951's Festival of Britain. During the war years, he was in charge of organizing shipping operations and convoys across the Atlantic. He was involved in the planning of "Operation Overlord", the invasion of Europe. For his services he was awarded the CVO and CB.[1]
Personal life
Nicholson married Mary Crawford in 1932 and they had two children, Piers and Tom. The marriage was dissolved in 1964 and Crawford died in 1995. Nicholson then married Marie Mauerhofer (known as Toni) in 1965; they had one child, a son, David. She died in 2002. Max Nicholson died in 2003, aged 98.
Legacy
Every year on Nicholson's birthday, 12 July, a group of people walk a section of the Jubilee Walkway in London to celebrate his work in establishing the route.[7] Two memorial sundials have been put in place in memory of Nicholson - one by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust at the WWT London Wetland Centre in Barnes, London, and another at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, where Nicholson went to school.
Selected publications
- Birds in England (1926)
- How Birds Live (1927)
- The Art of Bird-Watching (1931)
- The Humanist Frame (1961) (contribution)
- The System: The Misgovernment of Modern Britain (1967)
- The Environmental Revolution : A Guide for the New Masters of the World (1970)
References
- ^ S2CID 86369839.
- ^ Vickers, Hugo (2003) Obituary The Independent. 29 April 2003
- S2CID 89620094.
- ^ Kate Kellaway (7 November 2010). How the Observer brought the WWF into being The Observer.
- ^ Trust for Urban Ecology website
- ^ "Max Nicholson". BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 15 January 2015.
- ^ "Max Nicholson - Environmentalist, ornithologist, author and administrator". www.maxnicholson.com. Retrieved 16 April 2019.
External links
- Max Nicholson and Julian Huxley papers(Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA)
- Tribute site
- Guardian Obituary
- BBC 4 - Desert Island Discs