| 1 | Name: | Professor Sir Charles Godfray | |
| Institution: | Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford | ||
| Year Elected: | 2021 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1958 | ||
Charles Godfray was an undergraduate at the University of Oxford and received his PhD from Imperial College London in 1983. He held a temporary lectureship at Oxford before joining the faculty at Imperial College in 1987 where he remained until 2006, latterly as Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology. He then returned to Oxford as Hope Professor in the Department of Zoology, in 2018 taking up a new role in the University as Director of the interdisciplinary Oxford Martin School and Professor of Population Biology. He is a fellow of Balliol College. Charles’ research has been in ecology, evolution and epidemiology, and has involved both theoretical approaches as well as field and laboratory studies, typically using insect systems. Starting from his PhD work he has been interested in the structure of communities and pioneered ways of testing theories in community ecology by the construction of quantitative food webs and then doing manipulation experiments in the field. Most recently his community ecology work has included the effects of symbionts (the insect microbiome). He has worked extensively on insect population dynamics and its application to pest management, especially in the tropics. In evolution he has used a group of insects called parasitic wasps to test broad questions in areas such as sex ratio and life history theory. He has employed game theory to develop evolutionary theories of parent-offspring conflict and of signalling within the family. He is very interested in the science policy interface and has worked extensively on food systems, both academically and in advisory roles for UK Government and other organisations. Charles has received the Scientific Medal and the Frink Medal from the Zoological Society of London, and the Linnaean Medal from the Linnaean Society. He is an Honorary Member or Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, the British Ecological Society, and the International Academy of Food Science and Technology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of Academia Europaea and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He was knighted for contributions to science and science advice to government in 2017. | |||