Professor May is an Australian who spent most of the earlier part of his career in the Physics Department at Sydney University, gaining one of two Personal Chairs awarded by the university at age 33. His subsequent interests in the dynamics of animal populations, pursued at Princeton University and more recently as Royal Society Research Professor jointly at Oxford University and Imperial College London, have led to major contributions to the science of ecology, including seminal contributions to the emerging discipline of "chaos". His fundamental research achievements and more general contributions as inspiring lecturer and educator have been widely recognised by many international awards, elections to learned societies, and honorary degrees.