Andrewartha holds the degrees of B.Sc. Agric. (W.A.) and D.Sc. (Adelaide). He is distinguished especially as an ecologist. His outstanding contribution was to show how a general theory of ecology could be built up from the principles of population ecology. This and other fundamental contributions to ecology appeared in a book of which Andrewartha was the senior author. Andrewartha also is a first-class entomologist and statistician, an unusually able writer, and has a wide knowledge of the scientific and economic aspects of agriculture. He was a member of the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Zoology.