John A. Pickett

John Anthony Pickett CBE DSC FRS[1] (born 21 April 1945) is a British chemist who is noted for his work on insect pheromones.[2]

John Pickett

CBE DSC FRS
Pickett delivering a keynote talk at the Xth European Congress of Entomology, York, 2014
Born (1945-04-21) 21 April 1945
Alma mater
AwardsWolf Prize in Agriculture
Scientific career
FieldsChemistry
ThesisCompounds from hydrazine and dinitriles of possible use as blowing agents (1971)
Websitewww.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/521655-pickett-john

Education

Pickett completed his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Chemistry[3] degrees at the University of Surrey and was a postdoctoral researcher in organic chemistry at UMIST.

Career and research

Pickett joined the Brewing Research Foundation.[4] In 1976, he moved to Rothamsted Experimental Station (now Rothamsted Research), studying ways to control insect pests by modifying behavioural activity.[5]

In 1976, he joined the Insecticides and Fungicides Department (later the Department of Biological Chemistry) and was appointed Head of Department in 1984 and, concurrently in 2007, Scientific Director of the Rothamsted Centre for Sustainable Pest and Disease Management. He was awarded the first Michael Elliott[6] Distinguished Research Fellow at Rothamsted.

In 2017, he joined the School of Chemistry at Cardiff University as Professor of Biological Chemistry, and is involved with research in chemical ecology in the UK and around the world.

Pickett has over 540 publications and patents.[7] His scientific interests are chemical ecology involving chemically mediated interactions between various organisms including pests attacking plants and animals.[8]

Awards/Honours

Pickett's achievements include being awarded the Rank Prize, Nutrition and Crop Husbandry in 1995.

The Royal Society elected Pickett a fellow in 1996, (List of Fellows of the Royal Society[1] and he delivered the Croonian Lecture in 2008 to the Royal Society on Plant and Animal Communication.[9]

A member of multiple global societies including the German National Academy of Sciences, Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, Chemical Society of Ethiopia, and the Royal Entomological Society, where he was president from 2014–2016.

Pickett is a National Academy of Sciences (US) Foreign Associate, for his role as “an international driving force in the science and application of chemical ecology and in fostering advances in integrated pest management and agricultural sustainability”.

In 2008, Pickett won the Wolf Prize in Agriculture, "for their remarkable discoveries of mechanisms governing plant-insect and plant-plant interactions, their scientific contributions on chemical ecology have fostered the development of integrated pest management and significantly advanced agricultural sustainability[10]".

Pickett has also received the International Society of Chemical Ecology Medal[11] in 2002 and a CBE for Services to Biological Chemistry in 2004.

Pickett's Honorary degrees include:

  • Honorary Professor, University of Nottingham, 1991 in perpetuity
  • Honorary DSc, University of Aberdeen, 2008
  • Bachelor of the University of Surrey, honoris causa, 2 November 2011
  • Honorary DSc, University of Surrey, July 2016
  • Honorary DSc, University of Neuchâtel, October 2016
  • Honorary Distinguished Professor, Cardiff University, 2016
  • Honorary Professor, School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, 2017
  • Honorary Professor, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, 2017

Personal life

He married Ulla Birgitta Skålèn in 1970, they have a son and a daughter.

References
  1. Anon (1996). "Professor John Pickett CBE FRS". London: royalsociety.org. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --"Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2016.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. Anon (4 July 2006). "Hope for natural insect repellent". London: BBC.
  3. Pickett, John Anthony (1971). Compounds from hydrazine and dinitriles of possible use as blowing agents (PhD thesis). Surrey University of Guildford. OCLC 500540196.
  4. "John Pickett personal page". Archived from the original on 19 July 2011.
  5. "Rothamsted Corporate Press Release". Archived from the original on 19 July 2011.
  6. Pickett, John (2016). "Michael Elliott CBE. 30 September 1924 – 17 October 2007". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. London: Royal Society. 62: 109–123. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2016.0018.
  7. "Professor John Pickett". Cardiff University. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  8. "Professor John Pickett". Cardiff University. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  9. "Professor Pickett to give Royal Society's Croonian Prize Lecture". BBRSC. Archived from the original on 8 April 2014. Retrieved 7 April 2014.
  10. "home page". Wolf Foundation. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  11. "International Society of Chemical Ecology". www.chemecol.org. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
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