title: Professor Robert McNeill Alexander CBE FRS (1934-2016).
abstract: Robert McNeill Alexander, known to friends and colleagues as 'Neill', was a zoologist with an engineer's eye for how animals work. He used mathematical models to show how evolution has produced optimal designs. His skill was to choose appropriate models: realistic enough to contain the essence of a problem and yet simple enough to be tractable. He wrote fluently and easily: 23 books, 280 papers and a CD-ROM entitled How Animals Move.
authors.affiliation: University of Leeds, c/o 2 Hatton Place, Edinburgh EH9 1UD, UK r.f.ker@leeds.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Robert F
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6029-8609
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Ker
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D005010:Ethology / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D008124:Locomotion; D006113:United Kingdom; D015046:Zoology / Q000266:history*