Professor Anthony R.E. Sinclair was born in 1944 and raised in East Africa. He obtained a Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1970. Sinclair’s fascination of African nature brought him back to the continent in 1965 where he began his research on the Serengeti, work that spanned 52 years. He is now Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada and in 2013 he was awarded the Aldo Leopold medal from The Wildlife Society, USA.

Sinclair has conducted ecological research on the role of biodiversity in the functioning of ecosystems around the world including Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. His work in the Serengeti focused on how the ecosystem repaired itself after the catastrophic rinderpest disease of 1890. Because of his work we now have a better understanding of the role animal migrations, food shortage and predation play on the stability of an ecosystem, knowledge that can be used to restore ecosystems around the world.