Sir Gordon Richard Conway (6 July 1938 – 30 July 2023) was a British agricultural ecologist, who served as the president of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Royal Geographical Society. He was latterly Professor of International Development at Imperial College, London and Director of Agriculture for Impact, a grant funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on European support of agricultural development in Africa.
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Early life and education
Gordon Richard Conway was born in Birmingham on 6 July 1938. He was educated at the Bangor University, Cambridge University and the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of California, Davis.
Career
In the early 1960s, working in Sabah, North Borneo, Conway became one of the pioneers of sustainable agriculture and integrated pest management. From 1970 to 1986, he was Professor of Environmental Technology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. He then directed the sustainable agriculture program of the International Institute for Environment and Development in London before becoming Representative of the Ford Foundation in New Delhi from 1988 to 1992. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex and Chair of the Institute of Development Studies.