Its not so much Max stories, though there are plenty of those. It is the total achievement, made up of myriad projects. Max would have a bright idea and find some
person or group to help him implement it. If it didn't work, he would drop it and move on to the next project. If it did work, he would leave his helpers to get on with it, with regular messages of encouragement and other forms of support from Max. Max would then move on to the next project. His intellectual energy was phenomenal. I will mention just three projects in which I was involved .
When he had been running the Nature Conservancy for several years he decided it was time to move into the educational activities envisaged in the Charter. He set up (I think 1960) a Study Group on Education and Field Biology which he chaired and of which Tom Pritchard was secretary. The report "Science out of Doors" was published, I think, in 1963. I cannot remember to whom I lent my only copy. It did spawn a lot of ancillary activity (eg the Keele Conference) without greatly changing the face of environmental education in Britain
Max also thought there should be a Postgraduate Course in Conservation and discussed it with WH Pearsall, then Chairman of the Nature Conservancy Scientific Committee and also Professor of Botany at University College London. Pearsall was very happy that it could be based at UCL but said it would require extra finance, difficult in the middle of a quinquennium. So Max and Pearsall had lunch (at the Athenaeum as usual) with Sir Keith Murray, Chairman of the University Grants Committee, who said, as it happened, there was a little spare money the UGC would like to commit to a worthy project. So the Postgraduate Diploma (later to become M.Sc.) in Conservation was launched in September 1960. By being in the right place at the right time, I became the Course Director, while two new appointments were made, Brian O'Connor in the Zoology Dept. and Eric Bird in the Geography Dept. I was there only for the first seven years, but the course is still running (?in its 42nd year) and has, I believe, been an outstanding success.
Max phoned me in (I think) 1988 asking whether I would be free to go to Majorca the following year as Principal Investigator of an ecological project based at the Parc Natural S'Albufera near Alcudia in the north of Majorca. Max had, with the help of Pat Bishop, been supporting and promoting the Parc for some years. The project, careful ecological survey to help to underpin the management plan, was supported by Earthwatch Europe of which Max was Chairman at that time. Subsequent Principal Investigators included Franklyn Perring, Terry Wells and currently Nick Riddiford who has been involved from the start. The project is still running and much has been achieved. Max was keen to involve my wife, also a botanist, and she has also played a major role.
Other friends and colleagues of Max could cite many, many similar projects and experiences. How can we establish a complete record for posterity of what one person can achieve?
