This is a work in progress, and any additional information would be welcome
The Sir Alfred Lewis Prize is awarded, according to https://www.bangor.ac.uk/news/archive/prize-winners-2015-23505 to “to the best single or joint honours student in SBS excluding biology or biomedical science”. My father, Roger Lines, was awarded it in 1952, when what is now Bangor University was “The University College of North Wales”.
Sir Alfred Edward Lewis (1868-1940)
According to the Dictionary of Welsh Bibliography, he was born in Birmingham in 1868, son of John Lewis, a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist minister. He worked in banking from 1884, rising to deputy chairman of the National Provincial Bank in 1931. He was knighted in 1921, and made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1931 New Year Honours. He was made an honourary Doctor of Laws of the Universities of Birmingham (1930) and Wales (1935). He served, amongst other roles, on the Council of the National Library of Wales.
Woodland Crafts in Britain
My father chose a copy of Woodland Crafts in Britain, by Herbert L. Edlin for his prize. As well as being a prolific author and having worked as a tropical farmer in Malaya, Edlin worked, like my father, for the Forestry Commission, as a District Officer in the New Forest, and then from 1945 to 1976 as Press Officer, so my father would have known him well. He was born in 1913, so would have been 36 in 1949 when Woodland Crafts was published.
The state of woodland crafts in 1949 had moved on from the image suggested on the cover, but felling was by manual saw, and horses were used widely for timber extraction.
Other recipients of the prize
I have not found a comprehensive list, but did come across
Cyril Burdon-Jones (1919-2006)
He was awarded the prize in 1941, and after doing his PhD went to to be Senior Lecturer in Zoology, University of Wales. He went to Australia to be the first Professor of Zoology at the, then new, James Cook University, in 1968.
John Veron, who became renowned for his studies of coral reefs, was one of his PostDoc students.
In 2000 he was appointed an Honorary Research Associate, South Australian Museum, which has some further biographical information on him.