Professor R McNeill Alexander CBE FRS

Neill Alexander is emeritus Professor of Zoology in the University of Leeds and Editor of Proceedings of the Royal Society B. He has been President of the Society for Experimental Biology (1995-7) and of the International Society for Vertebrate Morphology (1997-2001), and Secretary of the Zoological Society of London, which runs London and Whipsnade Zoos and the Institute of Zoology (1992-9).

His research field is the mechanics of human and animal movement, especially of running and jumping. His group's research showed the importance of tendons as energy-saving springs in running mammals, including humans. Their mechanical tests on body parts have demonstrated the spring in the arch of the human foot, and the phenomenon of tendon fatigue. He and his collaborators have devised mathematical models which predict optimum patterns of human and animal movement, explaining many of the details of walking and running gaits, and of the jumping techniques of animals and athletes. He has investigated the strengths of animal leg bones in relation to the stresses that they have to withstand in life, and the consequences of size differences for the design of animals. He has used one of his theories to estimate dinosaur speeds from fossil footprints. He has also investigated the movements of jellyfish, fish, frogs, birds, dogs, horses, antelopes and elephants.

His many books include The human machine, Dynamics of dinosaurs, Exploring biomechanics: animals in motion, Optima for animals and Principles of animal locomotion, and he is the author of a multimedia CD-ROM, How animals move. He has been a scientific adviser for many television series including Walking with beasts and The future is wild.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, an Honorary Member of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, a member of the Academia Europaea and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received medals from the Zoological Society, the Linnean Society and the International Society for Biomechanics.