Botany at Bedford College, London : Prof. L. J. Audus

Abstract

DR. L. J. AUDUS, who has just been appointed to the Hildred Carlile chair of botany at Bedford College, London, is a distinguished member of the younger school of plant physiologists. He received his physiological training at Cambridge under the late Dr. F. F. Blackman, whose admirable tuition matured so many brilliant pupils. From Cambridge he went to University College, Cardiff, where he was lecturer in botany until he joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. He was stationed at Singapore, and when that city fell he escaped to Java, but was there captured by the Japanese. For three and a half years he was a prisoner in Java and Amboina, undergoing many hardships. During this period he collaborated with Dutch men of science who were fellow prisoners to organise an extremely resourceful manufacture of yeast-food, on a scale sufficient to keep vitamin starvation at bay and thus prevent what would otherwise have been a terrible mortality from beriberi. Dr. Audus is no mean artist and the sketches he was able to bring home illustrate life in Japanese prison camps with dramatic clarity. On his return to Britain he was appointed to the Soil Metabolism Unit of the Agricultural Research Council, then situated at University College, Cardiff, under Dr. J. H. Quastel, and he was engaged in research on the action of growth-promoting substances in the soil. The Unit was closed at the end of 1947 with the departure of Dr. Quastel to Canada, and Dr. Audus had just been appointed as Monsanto lecturer in plant physiology at Cardiff when the opportunity of the appointment at Bedford College called him away. He goes accompanied by the regrets and best wishes of all his colleagues at Cardiff.