Spencer Wharton Brown

Spencer Wharton Brown (28 November 1918 – 10 June 1977) was a professor and cyto-geneticist. He taught and did research at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1945 until his murder on June 10, 1977.[1][2] Brown was internationally renowned and sometimes referred to as "Mr. Chromosome."[3] He was the president of the International Congress of Genetics.[2][4] Brown was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956 in the field of plant studies.[5] He was the first to identify what is called paternal genome elimination in scale insects.

Life and work

Brown was born in Vermillion, South Dakota.[2][1] He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota in 1928, at the age of 20. He was mentored by Barbara McClintock for three years at the University of Missouri. When McClintock moved to the Carnegie Institute, Brown transferred to the University of California at Davis, where he received his Ph.D. in genetics for his study on Californian blackberries (Rubus spp.) one year later, in 1942.[2]

During the war he worked briefly in a shipyard as a welder and afterwards took an interest in psychotherapy and sought to become a professional and obtained admission to the Stanford and UCSF medical schools but decided not to follow it. He became an assistant professor at the University of Georgia in 1943. In 1945 he moved to Berkeley where he taught genetics. Spencer conducted cytological and karyological studies on tomatoes,[6] Drosophila and was especially interested in maternal effects.[7][8] He visited numerous laboratories around the world and in 1956 visited Trinidad to examine the genetics of banana. An association with the entomologist Frederick D. Bennett made him shift his interests to insect evolution and examined male haploidy in insects.[9][10][11] He identified the elimination of paternal genomes in male scale insects and noticed variations across several families and examined the evolution of these systems.[12][13]

Personal life

At the age of 21 Brown married Roberta Schuknecht. After 18 years together the marriage ended in divorce.[2]

Death

Brown was found dead at age 57 in his duplex apartment after failing to appear at a commencement ceremony. He had been bound and gagged before being shot twice in the back.[1] Three suspects were identified. One, Jeanette Iles, 27, pleaded guilty to participating in the robbery/murder, and was sentenced to a life sentence.[4]

Awards

Brown received the 1956 Guggenheim Fellowship, one of 44 such awards the University of California received that year.[14]

References
  1. Reiterman, Tim (June 14, 1977). "A gentle professor with some violent friends". The San Francisco Examiner. pp. 1, 18. Retrieved 3 May 2019 – via Newspapers.com. 2nd page
  2. "University of California: In Memoriam, September 1978". texts.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  3. Gold, Michael (1986). "6.Keeper of the Cells". A Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman's Immortal Legacy-And the Medical Scandal It Caused. SUNY Press. p. 50. ISBN 0887060994. LCCN 85-26264.
  4. "A guilty plea in prof's slaying". The San Francisco Examiner. June 10, 1978. p. 6. Retrieved 3 May 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. "Spencer W. Brown". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  6. Brown, Spencer W.; Nelson-Rees, Walter A. (1961). "Radiation Analysis of a Lecanoid Genetic System". Genetics. 46 (8): 983–1007. ISSN 0016-6731. PMC 1210258. PMID 17248058.
  7. Brown, Spencer W.; Zohary, Daniel (1955). "The Relationship of Chiasmata and Crossing over in Lilium Formosanum". Genetics. 40 (6): 850–873. ISSN 0016-6731. PMC 1224352. PMID 17247595.
  8. Brown, Spencer W. (1949). "The Structure and Meiotic Behavior of the Differentiated Chromosomes of Tomato". Genetics. 34 (4): 437–461. ISSN 0016-6731. PMC 1209457. PMID 17247326.
  9. Brown, Spencer W.; Nur, Uzi (1964). "Heterochromatic Chromosomes in the Coccids". Science. 145 (3628): 130–136. Bibcode:1964Sci...145..130B. doi:10.1126/science.145.3628.130. ISSN 0036-8075. JSTOR 1714122. PMID 14171547.
  10. Dempster E; Green MM; Nelson-Rees W; St Lawrence P. (1978). "Spencer Wharton Brown, 1918-1977". Genetics. 88(42 Suppl): 137–8. PMID 348563.
  11. Chandra, H. Sharat; Brown, Spencer W. (1975). "Chromosome imprinting and the mammalian X chromosome". Nature. 253 (5488): 165–168. Bibcode:1975Natur.253..165C. doi:10.1038/253165a0. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 1089205. S2CID 4164037.
  12. Brown, Spencer W. (1958). "The Chromosomes of an Orthezia Species (Coccoidea-Homoptera)". Cytologia. 23 (4): 429–434. doi:10.1508/cytologia.23.429. ISSN 0011-4545.
  13. Brown, Spencer W. (1967). "Chromosome systems of the Eriococcidae (Coccoidea-Homoptera): I. A survey of several genera". Chromosoma. 22 (2): 126–150. doi:10.1007/BF00326725. ISSN 0009-5915. S2CID 40767232.
  14. University of California (1955). University Bulletin:A Weekly Bulletin for the Staff of the University of California. Office of Official Publications, University of California. p. 1.
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