Mellanby, Kenneth (1908-1993)

British ecologist and entomologist who in the 1960s drew attention to the environmental effects of pollution, particularly by pesticides. He advocated the use of biological control methods, such as introducing animals that feed on pests.

Mellanby was born in West Hartlepool, County Durham, and studied at London University. On the staff of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine 1930-45, he went to East Africa to study the tsetse fly; while doing his World War II military service, he investigated scrub typhus in Burma (now Myanmar) and New Guinea. In 1947 he became the principal of University College, Ibadan, Nigeria's first university, which he played a part in creating. He was head of the Entomology Department at Rothamsted Experimental Station 1955-61, when he founded and became director of the Monks Wood Research Station (now called the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology) in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.