Ronald Karslake Starr Wood, (8 April 1919 – 26 April 2017) was a pioneer British plant pathologist, and Professor of Plant Pathology at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

. He was the first academic to be appointed chair in physiological plant pathology in England and Wales. He was also the first president of the British Society for Plant Pathology and the first president of the International Society for Plant Pathology.

Early life and education

Wood was born in the coal-mining town of Ferndale, south Wales, in 1919 to a working-class family. His parents were Percival T. E. Wood and Florence Dix Starr. He was a pupil at the Ferndale Grammar School. He was awarded a Royal Scholarship to attend Imperial College London where he graduated with first class honours in botany; he was a student of William Brown. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he worked at the

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. He was awarded a PhD in 1948 from the University of London.

Career and research

At Imperial College, he rose through the ranks from assistant lecturer (1945) through lecturer (1947) and reader (1955) and finally the Foundation Chair of Plant Pathology in the University of London (1964). He was a visiting

Regents' Professor Professors in the United States commonly occupy any of several positions of teaching and research within a college or university. In the U.S., the word "professor" informally refers collectively to the academic ranks of assistant professor, asso ...

at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

. He was the doctoral advisor of the British mycologist, Michael Francis Madelin, who had carried out pioneering research in

slime moulds Slime mold or slime mould is an informal name given to several kinds of unrelated eukaryotic organisms with a life cycle that includes a free-living single-celled stage and the formation of spores. Spores are often produced in macroscopic mu ...

and conidial fungi. He was also the secondary advisor to the pioneering Ghanaian plant pathologist,

George C. Clerk George Carver Clerk, (29 July 1931 – 2 May 2019) was a Ghanaian botanist and plant pathologist. A professor and later, an emeritus professor at the University of Ghana, Legon, he also focused his research on West African mycology and ecolo ...

during his PhD studies. In 1950, he was a Commonwealth Fund Fellow. Additionally, he was a Research Fellow at the Connecticut Agricultural Experimental Station in 1957. Among his other positions were the Director of the NATO Advanced Study Institute in the years 1970, 1975 and 1980. He was the Sir C. V. Raman Professor at the University of Madras in 1980. His work covered botanical microbial infection, plant disease control, especially of soil-borne biotrophic pathogens and relatively unknown plant diseases. He was author of the major manuscript, ''Physiological Plant Pathology'', which examined the chemical underpinnings of plant disease mechanisms. He also wrote the ''Phytotoxins in Plant Diseases'' (1972) and ''Active defense mechanisms in plants'' (1982)

Awards and honours

Wood was a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

. He served as the honorary secretary of the Association of Applied Biologists (AAB) and the chairperson of the Plant Pathology Committee of the British Mycological Society (BMS). From 1981 to 1984, he was he first chairman of the pure and applied biology department and later appointed the Dean of the Royal College of Science. He was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 1976 as well as a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society and a corresponding member of the

Deutsche Phytomedizinische Gesellschaft The German Phytomedicine Society (German: Deutsche Phytomedizinische Gesellschaft e.V. - DPG) is the professional association of practitioners of phytomedicine, as successor to the Association of German Plant Physicians, which was based in Berlin ...

. Wood was the Thurbum Fellow of the University of Sydney in 1979. Additionally, he was one of the earliest honorary members of the British Society for Plant Pathology. He was the Secretary-General of the First Institute Congress of Plant Pathology in 1968. He chaired the Governing Body of the E. Mailing Research Station and served as the Governor of the Institute of Horticultural Research. The German Federal Republic awarded Wood the ''Otto-Appel-Denkmunze'' in 1978 at the third International Congress of Plant Pathology held in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

Death

Ronald Wood died on 26 April 2017 at the age of 98.

Works

* ''Physiological plant pathology'', Blackwell Scientific, 1967 *''Phytotoxins in Plant Diseases, (edited with A. Ballio and A. Graniti)'' NATO Advanced Study Institute'','' 1972 * ''Disease in higher plants'', Oxford University Press, 1974, *''Specificity in Plant Diseases'' (edited with A. Graniti) 1976, *''Active defense mechanisms in plants'' Volume 1980, Plenum Press 1982 *''Plant Diseases: infection, damage and loss'' (editor) 1984. * ''Physiological Plant Pathology Comes of Age'', ''Annual Review of Phytopathology'', Vol. 25: 26-40 (September 1987)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wood, Ronald Karslake Starr 1919 births 2017 deaths 20th-century British biologists Fellows of the Royal Society Academics of Imperial College London Alumni of Imperial College London Deans of the Royal College of Science People from Rhondda Cynon Taf