Professor Dame Georgina Mace awarded posthumous honorary degree

Rod Evans, husband of Professor Dame Georgina Mace, accepts the honorary award.

The College has recognised Professor Dame Georgina Mace posthumously with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science.

Imperial College London’s Faculty of Natural Sciences Graduation award ceremony was held on 10 March 2022 at the Royal Albert Hall. As part of this event, the College awarded an honorary degree posthumously to renowned conservation scientist Professor Dame Georgina Mace, in recognition of her contribution to the field of conservation and global biodiversity protection. The award was conferred and presented by the Chair John Allan, and accepted by Professor Mace’s husband Rod Evans.  

Professor Mace was Professor of Biodiversity and Ecosystems and Head of the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research at University College London. She was a world leader in conservation and global biodiversity protection. She had a huge influence on global environmental policy and its scientific underpinnings, with work that shaped the UK government’s obligations to international conventions.

Professor Mace led the process to develop criteria for the Red List of threatened species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, worked on biodiversity elements of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and developed measures for the Convention on Biological Diversity’s biodiversity target in 2010. She also worked on the UK National Ecosystem Assessment in 2011 and a major working group report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2014. 

She was President of the British Ecological Society, President of the Society for Conservation Biology and Deputy Chair of DIVERSITAS. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2002, won the International Cosmos prize in 2007 and was named winner of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences in 2016. She became a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in 2016 for her services to science.

Whilst Professor Mace is credited with an astounding range of scientific projects, global committees, and leadership roles, she is also remembered for her consistently good spirit, tireless mentoring and generous leadership. 

Following her sad death in 2020, the Georgina Mace Centre for the Living Planet was launched in Professor Mace's honour at Imperial College London, in remembrance of her commitment to improving the environment for all wildlife. The Centre is dedicated to producing science-based solutions to environmental problems.