East Malling Research Station: Dr. F. R. Tubbs

Abstract

DR. F. R. TUBBS, who has been appointed director of the East Malling Research Station in succession to Sir Ronald Hatton, took up his new duties on July 1. Dr. Tubbs, who is forty-one, studied at the Imperial College of Science and Technology. After graduating, he was awarded a Ministry of Agriculture post-graduate scholarship in plant physiology. For work on thejmect of manorial deficiency upon the mechanical strength of barley straw, carried out under the direction of Dr. F. G. Gregory at Rothamsted, he was awarded the degree of M.Sc. After spending six months at the East Mailing and Long Ashton Research Stations, he proceeded to Ceylon in 1930 to found a Department of Plant Physiology at the Tea Research Institute of Ceylon. In 1935 he was awarded the degree of Ph.D. in the University of London for a thesis on the influence of climate and type of pruning on the growth of tea. He also studied methods of vegetative propagation, selection, etc., of the tea bush. After serving in the Army from 1939, he was placed on the retired list in December 1945 with the rank of lieut.-colonel, and returned to Ceylon to resume his investigations at the Tea Research Institute. He returned to Britain in 1948 to take up an appointment as manager in charge of the Horticultural Division of the Food Research Organisation of Messrs. Lever Bros, ancl Unilever, Ltd., at Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire.