30 Apr 2020
RVC professor who built his own aeroplane to monitor African cheetahs in the wild elected as fellow of The Royal Society.
David Woodmansey
Job Title
Alan Wilson flew across Botswana to monitor cheetahs in the wild. Image © RVC
Alan Wilson, professor of locomotor biomechanics at the RVC, has been elected a fellow of The Royal Society (FRS) for his outstanding contributions to science.
Prof Wilson joins an exclusive group of veterinarians to be awarded FRS status and is the only member of staff from the RVC to be granted this honour in the modern era.
Prof Wilson’s area of expertise is primarily focused on how the musculoskeletal system of athletic animals is configured and used to deliver economical and high-performance locomotion, and the biomechanical factors that limit locomotor performance.
His work has seen him cross the globe examining the performance of sport animals during competition, wild African animals during hunting and the energetics of bird flight.
Prof Wilson’s commitment to research also led him to build an aeroplane in his garden, obtain a pilot’s licence, and spend a decade developing his own tracking collars so he could fly across Botswana and monitor cheetahs in the wild.
His election to the world’s oldest independent scientific academy reflects the pioneering results of his work and is testament to the significant number of papers he has published over the years.
Prof Wilson’s research has been featured in a number of BBC documentaries, including Horizon: The Secret Life of the Cat and Big Cats.
Both series used Prof Wilson’s tracking and movement-sensing collars to understand hunting and ranging behaviour, to determine what makes the cheetah such an incredible predator.
