Madhav Gadgil

Madhav Dhananjaya Gadgil (24 May 1942 – 7 January 2026) was an Indian ecologist, academic, writer, columnist and the founder of the Centre for Ecological Sciences, a research unit of the Indian Institute of Science. He was a member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India and the Head of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) of 2010, popularly known as the Gadgil Commission.

Gadgil was a recipient of the Volvo Environment Prize and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri in 1981 and followed it up with the third highest award of the Padma Bhushan in 2006. He received the Champions of the Earth in 2024. in Pune, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. His parents were Pramila and Dhananjay Ramchandra Gadgil, a Cambridge scholar, economist, former director of the Gokhale Institute and the author of the Gadgil formula. He graduated in biology from Fergusson College of the University of Pune in 1963, and secured a master's degree in zoology from the Mumbai University in 1965.

Harvard years Gadgil was encouraged to join Harvard University by Giles Mead, then curator of fishes at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Initially intending to do research under Mead, Gadgil later changed subjects by hearing lectures of E. O. Wilson, "the brightest young star in the ecology-evolution end of biology at Harvard at that time," and subsequently did his doctoral research on mathematical ecology and fish behaviour, under the guidance of William Bossert,

It earned him a PhD in 1969. Subsequently, he received a Fellowship from IBM to continue his work as a research fellow at the Harvard Computing Center and simultaneously worked as a lecturer of biology at the university for two years.

In 1976, when the Government of Karnataka decided to look into protecting the bamboo resources of the state, Gadgil was asked to conduct a study, which is reported to have influenced the government to curb the subsidies provided to forest-based industries. A decade later, in 1986, he was appointed a member of the Scientific Advisory Council to Prime Minister of India, a post he held till 1990. He was a member of the National Tiger Conservation Authority In 2010, when the Government of India constituted an expert panel, Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), to examine the ecological issues related to the Western Ghats, he was selected as the chairman of the panel. He was married to Sulochana Gadgil, a meteorologist and a Harvard scholar, whom he met during his Fergusson College years.

Gadgil died in Pune on 7 January 2026, at the age of 83. He was survived by his son and daughter, and was predeceased by his wife, who died in July 2025.

Legacy

One of the major contributions of Gadgil is his effort towards the preservation of ecology of India. His early researches in the 1980s have helped in the identification of the Nilgiris as the first biosphere reserve in India. marking around 64 percent of the Western Ghats region as Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA). the environmentalists welcoming the recommendations and the state governments of the neighbouring states and the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church of Kerala disapproving it. His contributions, as a member of the draft committee, has been reported in the preparation of the Biological Diversity Act 2002 and the manual he prepared for the People's Biodiversity Registers has been accepted by the National Biodiversity Authority. He developed a penchant for writing at an early age and his first publication was a series of ten articles on animal behaviour, published in Srishtidnyan, a Marathi language science magazine, when he was studying in the 10th standard. He published his first book in English, This Fissured Land, a book on the ecological history of India, in 1992. The next book, Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India, again co-authored by Ramachandra Guha, was released in 1995, followed by Nurturing Biodiversity: An Indian Agenda, a book co-authored by P. R. Seshagiri Rao, in 1998. In 2005, he published two books, Diversity : The cornerstone of life and Ecological Journeys. As a part of his responsibilities as a Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment, he has contributed towards the preparation of People's Biodiversity Registers and has published a manual, People's Biodiversity Registers: A Methodology Manual. Some of his books have been translated into many languages and serve as texts for academic studies.

Awards and recognition Dr. Madhav Gadgil (right) and Col. Ashwin Baindur (left, in white shirt) at a Wikidata workshop in Pune on 18 September 2017 The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) elected him as their Fellow in 1984. He was Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), an honorary Fellow of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and a recipient of the National Environment Fellowship of the Ministry of Environment and Forests for his field research in the Western Ghats. He was elected as a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1991 and he served as a member of the British Ecological Society and Ecological Society of America. In between, in 1983, the Government of Karnataka honoured him with Rajyotsava Prashasthi, their second highest civilian award.

Gadgil received the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award from the Government of India in 2006 The Central University of Orissa honoured him with the degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) in 2013 The University of Southern California awarded him the John and Alice Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2015, which he shared with Jane Lubchenco, a Distinguished Professor of Oregon State University, He is also a recipient of the Vikram Sarabhai Award and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar Award. A species of frog, Micrixalus gadgili, is also named after him.