Editorial

Abstract

You have accessMoreSectionsView PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Cite this article Longair Malcolm 2019EditorialBiogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc.671–8http://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2019.0030SectionYou have accessEditorialEditorial Malcolm Longair Malcolm Longair [email protected] Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author Malcolm Longair Malcolm Longair [email protected] Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author Published:28 August 2019https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2019.0030Welcome to volume 67 of Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. Among the many notable scientists included in this volume are two Nobel Prize winners. John Sulston shared the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his contribution to understanding the genetic control of cell fate, while Kenneth Arrow was awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economics, which he shared with John Hicks. Sulston will also be remembered for his successful advocacy of free public access of scientific information and against the patenting of genes and the privatization of genetic technologies.We also appreciate greatly the contributions of David Smith, who was Biological Secretary of the Royal Society for the period 1983–1987. Special mention should be made of Patrick Moore, an Honorary Fellow of the Society, for his extraordinary career as the public face of astronomy for many decades and for inspiring so many young people to take up scientific careers.Memoirs are published as soon as they have been received, refereed and processed by the publishing team, generally resulting in a very broad picture of the science carried out by many highly distinguished scientists. No effort is made to collect together memoirs for particular themed volumes but, every so often without any efforts by the editorial team, statistical fluctuations result in a ‘themed’ volume. This has happened in volume 67, which contains an amazingly strong set of memoirs of Fellows who made pioneering contributions to cellular biology and genetics. These describe the remarkable developments in this area over the last 50 years, but it is also illuminating to read them as a whole, demonstrating the incredible advances in the life sciences and the practical application of discoveries for the benefit of society. As always, the human stories associated with them are inspiring, particularly those that record the sheer determination to succeed in the face of adversity.Biographical Memoirs volumes 62 to 67This is the fourth year in which the present team has been managing the production of Biographical Memoirs. We have reviewed progress made over that period and the lessons learned from these efforts. Four years ago we set as our objective the provision of as complete a record as is feasible of the science and personalities of the Fellows of the Society, recognizing the special role the memoirs play in recording the achievements of our colleagues. The memoirs are primarily scientific biographies written by scientists, with no pretence that these are substitutes for the much more complete works of professional biographers. Within the constraint of about 7000 words, there is plenty of scope for highlighting the major contributions of those celebrated.We were faced with a considerable backlog of unwritten memoirs in early 2016 and set about attempting to provide more complete coverage. We immediately greatly increased the membership of the Editorial Board, the current 29 members being listed on page iv—we could not have made progress without their enthusiastic and positive support. The Society also agreed that we could increase the number of volumes from one to two per year. Thus, in 2018 and 2019, two volumes have been published in each year. The following statistics give some impression of what has been achieved, as well as highlighting some of the issues involved in attempting to provide more complete coverage.A total of 135 memoirs have appeared over this four-year period, with the numbers per year roughly doubling in 2018 and 2019 as compared with 2016 and 2017 (table 1). Since January 2016, we have commissioned well over 150 memoirs and, as of the end of June 2019, 160 memoirs are being written. Table 1. Numbers of memoirs in the six volumes 62 to 67 combined into totals per year. Collapse 2019201820172016Totals41442327It is interesting to review the year of death of those Fellows for which memoirs were published in the last four years. Figure 1 represents the cumulative statistics for volumes 62 to 67. We gave priority to memoirs for those Fellows who died from 2010 onwards, but made our best efforts to improve the representation of the period 2000 to 2009 as well. We are pleased that we have made some progress in the latter era. The date of death distribution for the 160 commissioned memoirs, as of the end of June 2019, is shown in figure 2. Figure 1. Cumulative statistics for volumes 62 to 67. (Online version in colour.)Download figureOpen in new tabDownload PowerPointFigure 2. Number of Fellows by year of death for whom memoirs have been commissioned as of June 2019. (Online version in colour.)Download figureOpen in new tabDownload PowerPointConcerning the memoirs that still need to be commissioned, as of the end of June 2019, there are 21 outstanding memoirs to be commissioned for those who died in the last three years. There are 74 Fellows who have died since 2000 for whom a memoir has not been commissioned, despite considerable efforts on the part of the Editor and the Editorial Board to find willing authors. The year of death distribution is shown in figure 3 for those for whom no memoir has been commissioned. We will certainly be able to reduce the number of uncommissioned memoirs for those who died from 2016 onwards. We have done pretty well in reducing the backlog to 2010, but at earlier times it is becoming progressively more difficult. Figure 3. Number of Fellows by year of death for whom memoirs have not been commissioned as of June 2019. (Online version in colour.)Download figureOpen in new tabDownload PowerPointReflectionsWe have no illusions about the problems of doing much better for the period 2000 to 2010. In the present volume 67, the examples of Mary Pickford and Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch show just how difficult it can be, particularly when Fellows live to a very great age. Much of their important work was done when they were in their thirties to forties and, in many cases, this may be beyond the period when their colleagues and students are still around to write memoirs. Mary died on exactly her 100th birthday in 2002, while Salome died aged 100 in 2007. The writing changes from being a scientific memoir to one requiring the skills of a professional biographer. We are particularly grateful to the authors of these two memoirs for the amount of research they had to carry out to provide excellent essays of two pioneering women Fellows of the Society.The message that comes through from this study is that we need to try to obtain memoirs as soon as is feasible or the immediate memories of friends, colleagues and students will be lost. We plan to make a further appeal to the Fellowship to help with some of the older outstanding memoirs in the near future. A list of memoirs in the process of being written is available on the website (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbm/memoirs-progress)—if any readers can help with memoir writers for the Fellows not appearing in that list, please do get in touch with Helen Eaton or me.Doubling our output would not have been possible without the excellent work done by the authors of the memoirs. They have all been very cooperative and patient with the editorial team. Again, I record my gratitude to the members of the Editorial Board who have been very helpful and prompt in making the increased output possible. Finally, the Royal Society team have risen to the challenge and I thank them all for the pleasure it is to work with them.Biographical Memoirs volume 67There are 20 memoirs spanning a wide range of the sciences in this second volume of Biographical Memoirs published in 2019. The following notes are intended to act as a guide to the different disciplines represented, with brief summaries of the achievements of the Fellows, largely taken from the memoirs’ synopses. These, and previous volumes, can be accessed on the Royal Society website.AnthropologyAlan Walker’s field discoveries filled major gaps in our knowledge of primate evolution, such as elucidating the Miocene world of Proconsul, finding the transitional ‘Black Skull’ of Australopithecus aethiopicus, and the skeleton of a Homo erectus boy. He was essential in bringing a palaeobiological approach to the laboratory interpretation of their bony morphology. He pioneered dental microwear analysis to infer diet and was an early-adopter of the use of micro-computed tomography (microCT) to explore the internal structure of primate ear bones.Cellular, molecular and developmental biology and geneticsSalome Gluecksohn-Waelsch was a pioneer in establishing the field of mammalian developmental genetics, bringing together experimental embryology and genetics at a time when the role of genes in development was far from accepted. Her career was remarkable not only for its longevity, but also for ushering in new ways of approaching developmental biology in mammals. Throughout the decades that saw a blossoming of the entire field of genetics, her work tackled some of the most perplexing problems in mammalian genetics, and firmly established the mouse as a model organism, not only for studying development, but also for the eventual application of molecular biology techniques to development.Anthony (Tony) Linnane pioneered research into the biogenesis of mitochondria, covering enzymology, membrane biochemistry and molecular biology and genetics, over more than two decades until the mid 1980s. He then broadened his research towards medical topics, especially the role of mitochondria in human ageing, together with studies of interferon and cancer-specific mucinous antigens.Murdoch Mitchison investigated cell growth and division, employing a meticulous approach to experiments over a period of 30 years. He considered there to be a ‘growth cycle’ in cells, independent of the DNA-division cycle. His work on Schizosaccharomyces pombe came to both national and international recognition, forming a foundation for the current thriving community of researchers in cell physiology, cell genetics and molecular biology.Donald (Don) Northcote rose to fame in plant biochemistry following his identification of the processes involved in the synthesis and deposition of polysaccharides that constitute the cell walls of plants. His researches spanned lower and higher plant species. He showed by the application of a variety of experimental techniques, including radioautography, electrophoresis, freeze-etching and the novel use of electron microscopy, that much of the material of the cell wall is synthesized in cytoplasmic organelles before being transported to the developing wall in vesicles assembled from the membranes of the Golgi body.David Smith was an international authority in the biological discipline of symbiosis and an influential leader in academic life. Through his work on photosynthetic symbioses in lichens and invertebrate animals, he transformed the field of symbiosis from a study of taxonomy and morphology into an experimental science. In particular, he applied novel radiotracer techniques to demonstrate that lichens are metabolically dynamic, with photosynthetically-fixed carbon transferred from symbionts to lichen host at high rates.John Sulston shared the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his contribution to understanding the genetic control of cell fate during the development of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. His position as one of the leaders of the international and publicly funded Human Genome Project brought him to public prominence. Both his work on the worm cell lineage and his later commitment to genome sequencing stemmed from his conviction that investing in large-scale data collection would have long-term benefits for future scientific discovery.ChemistryBrice Bosnich had an abiding interest in stereochemistry and its relationship with chemical reactivity, as well as in the chirality and optical activity of coordination and organometallic complexes, mainly those of the d-block elements. Catalytic enantioselective synthesis is a powerful and economic method of introducing chirality into the synthesis of biologically active molecules, which, since the thalidomide tragedy, are required to be marketed only in optically pure forms. Dissymmetric ligands similar to (S,S)-chiraphos are now routinely employed in this type of synthesis. He maintained a strong interest in the properties of multimetallic proteins and devoted much effort to the construction of chiral binucleating ligands.Donald (Don) Bradley opened up the field of metal alkoxides and defined the parameters controlling their aggregative and volatility properties that later dictated their use as precursors for fabrication of metal oxide thin films. His legacy also included seminal contributions to the structure and bonding in the compound classes of metal amides and metal imides. He made highly innovative contributions in the field of metal organic chemical vapour deposition fabrication of III/V semiconductor thin films, both through synthesis of single source precursors and through synthesis of molecular vehicles for safe storage and delivery of pyrophoric precursors.EconomicsKenneth Arrow was a mathematical economist and political scientist who made many ground-breaking contributions to the theory of economics and social values. His great mathematical ability led him to introduce new approaches to theoretical economics and in particular to a series of fundamental theorems in the discipline, including the Arrow Impossibility theorem, the two fundamental theorems of welfare economics and the existence of a competitive equilibrium. He was awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economics shared with Sir John Hicks.GeophysicsMartin Bott was a geophysicist who made fundamental contributions to our understanding of gravity and magnetic anomalies and their geological interpretation. His research on the deep structure of the Earth's crust was both pioneering and innovative, and he showed how field geophysical measurements could be used to address geological problems such as the mechanics of granite emplacement, sedimentary basin formation and mountain building.Raymond Hide worked at the interfaces between fundamental hydrodynamics, magnetohydrodynamics, the geophysics of the Earth's interior, atmosphere and oceans and those of other planets. In laboratory studies of sloping thermal convection in the early 1950s he discovered various regimes of vacillation and other multiply-periodic intransitive flows as well as aperiodic flows, now recognized as a form of geostrophic turbulence. These provided a paradigm for interpreting large-scale flows in the atmospheres of the Earth and other planets. His extensive research on fluctuations of the Earth's rotation led to new developments in areas as diverse as meteorology and climatology and studies of the structure and dynamics of the Earth's deep interior.Material science and engineeringAndrew Lang will be remembered for having developed the technique of X-ray topography that enables individual defects, such as dislocations, stacking faults, small angle boundaries and magnetic domains, to be imaged in many different types of materials. His interests spanned the whole range of dislocation studies and he made many important contributions to advanced instrumentation for X-ray crystallography, including pioneering experiments with synchrotron radiation sources.Mathematics and statisticsJames Alexander (Sandy) Green was an algebraist, famous for his work on modular representations of finite groups and the development of the theory of polynomial representations of general linear groups. He determined the characters of arbitrary finite general linear groups. He then turned to representations of finite groups over fields of prime characteristic, his work laying the foundations for the module theoretic approach to the subject. His monograph on polynomial representations of GLn has become the basis for algebraic highest weight theory. In 1995 he proved a fundamental result on Hall algebras, establishing a connection between quantum groups and representations of finite-dimensional quiver algebras.John Nelder was a statistician who made important contributions to applied statistical theory, of which three are notable: his work on general balance; his influential collaboration with Robert Wedderburn and later Peter McCullagh on the development of generalized linear models (GLMs); and his post-retirement collaboration with Youngjo Lee on hierarchical generalized linear models. His work on GLMs completely changed the world of statistical modelling and his theory of general balance was years ahead of its time.Medical sciences, physiology and neuroscienceDavid Barker was one of the most influential medical scientists of our time. His ‘foetal programming hypothesis’, known as the Barker Hypothesis, transformed thinking about what causes chronic diseases that are the scourge of modern society: cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The hypothesis proposed that the environment of the foetus and infant determined by maternal nutrition and exposure to infection subsequently predisposes the pathologies of later life. He challenged the idea that chronic diseases result from a combination of bad genes and unhealthy adult lifestyle. His initially controversial, but now widely accepted, ideas produced an explosion of research worldwide into the complex processes of nutrition and growth during intrauterine and early postnatal life, and how these cause adult diseases.Ainsley Iggo’s research was focused on the functional properties of sensory receptors in the skin and viscera. He developed a new electrophysiological technique for recording the electrical activity of individual afferent fibres and was the first to record such activity from single unmyelinated afferents, the smallest diameter afferents in sensory nerves. His seminal work contributed to the discovery of nociceptors—the sensory receptors that respond to injury and are at the origin of pain sensation. Later in life he also contributed to studies of sensory neurons in the spinal cord and of the sensory electro-receptors found in animals such as the echidna and the platypus.John Newsom-Davis was a neurologist who played an important role in the discovery of the causes of, and treatments for, Myasthenia gravis and of other diseases of the nerve–muscle junction. Following his move from London to Oxford in 1987, he began the molecular work that identified the genetic basis for many forms of congenital myasthenic syndrome.Mary Pickford was an experimental physiologist who carried out pioneering work on the actions of the hormones secreted by the posterior pituitary gland in the brain. She provided understanding of how the secretion of these hormones is controlled to regulate body fluid composition, specifically the maintenance, through actions on the kidneys, of normal osmolarity and Na+ concentration, and hence blood volume and pressure. The principles that Mary established have been extensively confirmed. She overcame entrenched gender prejudice during her career; she was the first woman to be elected to the Pharmacological Society and the first woman appointed to a chair in the Edinburgh Medical School.Science communicationPatrick Moore brought a passionate enthusiasm for astronomy to the general public, principally through his long-running television series The Sky at Night. He had the extraordinary ability to communicate in simple, articulate and direct language the significance of advances in astronomy and astrophysics to the general public, inspiring generations of young people to take an interest in astronomy, and in science in general.Author ProfileMalcolm LongairMalcolm Longair CBE FRS FRSE is Jacksonian Professor Emeritus of Natural Philosophy and Director of Development, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He has held many highly respected positions within the fields of physics and astronomy. He was appointed the ninth Astronomer Royal of Scotland in 1980, as well as Regius Professor of Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, and the director of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. He was head of the Cavendish Laboratory from 1997 to 2005. He has served on and chaired many international committees, boards and panels, working with both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). He has chaired numerous committees for specific science projects, including the Planck and Euclid missions of ESA. His main research interests are in high energy astrophysics, astrophysical cosmology and the history of physics and astrophysics. His book, Maxwell's enduring legacy: a scientific history of the Cavendish Laboratory, was published in July 2016. His current projects include a third edition of his book Theoretical concepts in physics and continuing to enhance the online digital archive of historic photographs illustrating the history of the Cavendish Laboratory.Footnotes© 2019 The Author(s)Published by the Royal Society Next Article VIEW FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD PDF FiguresRelatedReferencesDetails This IssueDecember 2019Volume 67 Article InformationDOI:https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2019.0030Published by:Royal SocietyPrint ISSN:0080-4606Online ISSN:1748-8494History: Published online28/08/2019Published in print01/12/2019 License:© 2019 The Author(s)Published by the Royal Society Citations and impact Subjectsbiographical historytwentieth century science