Edward Max Nicholson

Edward Max Nicholson (12 July 1904 – 26 April 2003) was a pioneering environmentalist, ornithologist and internationalist, and a founder of the World Wildlife Fund.

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)).

Monks Wood Experimental Station, which helped set up, was perhaps the first to examine the effect of toxic chemicals on wildlife.

One of LUC's first reports was 'Parkways in principle and Practice' (1967), in which Nicholson urged that "the problems of recreation, traffic, environmental quality and conservation should be studied together .

He was the only author to stay with the project from start to end, personally writing the habitat sections of all species in the nine volumes.

In 1978, Nicholson was instrumental in founding the ENDS Report which became a highly influential journal for environmental policy specialists.

He was President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds from 1980 to 1985, helped set up the New Renaissance Group and was a trustee of Earthwatch Europe.

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.

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.