About the Authors
John L. Monteith (1929-2012)
John Monteith was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, and studied physics at the University of Edinburgh, where he first developed an enthusiasm for meteorology from the teaching of James Paton. His post-graduate education took him to Imperial College London, first to complete the diploma course in meteorology, then to undertake a PhD program. Seeking to develop his interest in agricultural meteorology for his PhD, he was encouraged by HL Penman, in the Physics Department at Rothamsted Experimental Station, to focus on the physics of dew formation. His research required him to build new instrumentation for detecting dewfall, and the data analysis made use of energy balance principles to distinguish between atmospheric and soil sources of water vapor; innovative instrumentation and data analysis remained at the core of his later research. In 1954 he joined Penman at Rothamsted and began work on extending the Penman Equation to allow for the control that vegetation imposes on water loss. The resulting Penman-Monteith Equation was published in 1965, and has been widely used in irrigation planning, ecophysiology, and climate modeling. At Rothamsted he also worked with Geza Sceicz and others on radiation absorption by vegetation canopies, radiation climatology, diffusion porometry, and made some of the first measurements of carbon dioxide exchange between canopies and the atmosphere.
In 1965 he was appointed to a newly created Chair in Environmental Physics at the University of Nottingham School of Agriculture, Sutton Bonington. In addition to leading a research group continuing the study of environmental factors determining crop yield, he developed new work on the energy balance of animals, particularly aimed at understanding how the insulation of coats and tissue influenced heat loss and gain. The first edition of Principles of Environmental Physics, published in 1973, expanded on much of the material he taught in a year-long course to senior undergraduates at Sutton Bonington. Postgraduate students and postdoctoral scientists from the Environmental Physics group are employed in government and industrial research and teaching around the world. As Environmental Physics became more widely practiced, he collaborated with Delta-T Devices and Campbell Scientific in the commercial development of several instruments that he had pioneered (solarimeters, porometers etc); he companies have since become leaders in environmental instrumentation. He also spent six months at NASA in Maryland, USA, extending approaches for measuring crop production using remote sensing.
Applying his interests to tropical crops, he established a Tropical Crops Research Unit at Sutton Bonington in which studies of crops growing in computer-controlled glass-houses were complemented by field experiments at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). In 1987 he became Director of the Resource Management Program at ICRISAT, and moved to Hyderabad, India, where he encouraged an increased emphasis on the quantitative analysis of crop growth and resource capture. In 1991 he returned to Scotland to retire, but continued publishing for several years as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Natural Environment Research Council Institute of Terrestrial Ecology near Edinburgh.
In a career spanning over half a century, he is perhaps most widely known for the Penman-Monteith equation that has become the basis for guidelines for estimating irrigation water requirements used by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1971 and the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1972. In addition, he was a Fellow (1951) and Honorary Fellow (1997) of the Royal Meteorological Society, Fellow (1966) of the Institute of Physics, Fellow (1976) of the Institute of Biology, and served as president of the Royal Meteorological Society between 1978-1980. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by the University of Edinburgh in 1989. During his career he served on many national and international scientific committees and on the editorial boards of prominent scientific publications. Outside his scientific career he was an enthusiastic photographer and gardener, an accomplished musician, and a devoted family man who enjoyed many hill-walking holidays with his wife and five children in the Scottish Highlands.
Mike Unsworth (1942- )
Mike Unsworth was born in Northumberland, England, and studied physics at the University of Edinburgh. Looking for opportunities to apply physics in a biological context, he then chose to do a PhD in Medical Physics at Edinburgh. Enjoyable experience as a post-graduate assistant in undergraduate physics laboratories convinced him to seek a university teaching appointment after his PhD, and this coincided with an assistant lecturer position being advertised in John Monteith’s Environmental Physics group at the University of Nottingham. With encouragement from Alastair Thom who had recently joined the Edinburgh Physics faculty after completing a PhD with Monteith, he applied for the position and was appointed in 1968.
In his early research he collaborated with John on radiation climatology, measuring the influence of aerosols on solar fluxes at the surface, and studying downward longwave radiation from cloudless skies. His interest in aerosols expended to include investigations of aerosol precursors such as sulphur dioxide and other air pollutants, leading to research in two areas by his postgraduate students and post-docs: analysis of factors controlling deposition of sulphur dioxide, and influences of sulphur dioxide on stomatal responses. Measurement and analysis of deposition of droplets to vegetation was a logical extension using the aerodynamic flux method, and was applied to acid fog and to pesticide drift. His research group also developed one of the first computer-controlled free-air release systems for exposing crop canopies to sulphur dioxide, a technique later used by others in more sophisticated systems for exposing vegetation to elevated carbon dioxide concentrations (FACE systems). Sabbaticals in Guelph, Canada (1976) and Raleigh, North Carolina (1982) provided opportunities to investigate deposition of ozone and to use of open-top chambers for ozone effects research; open-top chamber work was later initiated at Sutton Bonington.
In 1983 he moved to become Head of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology Research Station outside Edinburgh, collaborating in research with Melvin Cannell on frost hardiness of red spruce exposed to acid cloud water, and with David Fowler who led the Biogeochemistry group. In 1988 he returned to the University of Nottingham to the Chair of Environmental Physics vacated by John Monteith. The second edition of Principles of Environmental Physics was completed by Monteith and Unsworth in the late 1980’s and was published in 1990.
In 1992 he became Director of the Center for Analysis of Environmental Change at Oregon State University (OSU), a post he held for seven years before transferring to the Atmospheric Sciences faculty at OSU. In 1995 he and Dick Waring began a research program to measure and analyse the carbon dioxide exchange of old-growth ponderosa pine forest. The work later expanded to include young and intermediate stands; Bev Law now leads the program. Other work by his research students and post-doctoral researchers on the environmental physics of old-growth forests included studies of rainfall interception and forest water balance, investigations of heat and mass transfer in cold air drainage in steep valleys (in collaboration with Barbara Bond), and analysis of microclimate in complex topography (with Chris Daly). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1989 and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 1990. He has served on many national and international committees. A full publication list is available on the Companion Website.
Mike Unsworth has two grown children living in Edinburgh, Scotland, and lives with his second wife and their two teenage children in Corvallis Oregon. His interests include hiking and backpacking, skiing, kayaking, and volunteering in hospitals, schools and foster homes with his therapy dog Luke.