Roy Elwood Clausen (August 21, 1891,

Randall, Iowa Randall is a city in Hamilton County, Iowa, United States. The population was 154 at the time of the 2020 census. History A post office called Randall has been in operation since 1863. The city was named for Samuel J. Randall, a member of the Ho ...

– August 21, 1956,

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

) was a biochemist, botanist, plant geneticist, and

drosophilist {{Unreferenced, date=May 2019, bot=noref (GreenC bot) Drosophilist is a term used to refer to both the specific group of scientists trained in the laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morgan, and more generally any scientist who uses the vinegar fly ''Drosoph ...

Biography

Clausen was the eldest of six siblings. As a boy with his family, he moved from Iowa to

Newkirk, Oklahoma Newkirk is a city and county seat of Kay County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 2,172 at the 2020 census. History Newkirk is on land known as the Cherokee Outlet (popularly called the "Cherokee Strip"), which belonged to the Chero ...

in 1900. In 1910 he graduated with a bachelor of science degree in agriculture from Stillwater's Oklahoma A&M (later renamed Oklahoma State University). In 1910 Roy and his brother Curtis both matriculated at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. There Roy Clausen graduated in 1912 with a second bachelor's degree in agriculture with a major in plant pathology and graduated in 1914 with a Ph.D. in biochemistry with a minor in plant pathology. His thesis advisor was T. Brailsford Robertson. From 1914 until his death in 1956, Roy Clausen was a faculty member at UC Berkeley. During World War I he was on an eighteen-month leave of absence when he served in the U.S. Army as a supply officer in a depot brigade. During World War II he was on another leave of absence when he served in 1944 and 1945 as a personnel officer at the

Los Alamos Laboratory The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret laboratory established by the Manhattan Project and operated by the University of California during World War II. Its mission was to design and build the first atomic bombs. Ro ...

. As a graduate assistant of William A. Setchell, Clausen began investigating the genus ''

Nicotiana ''Nicotiana'' () is a genus of herbaceous plants and shrubs in the Family (biology), family Solanaceae, that is Native plant, indigenous to the Americas, Australia, Southwestern Africa and the South Pacific. Various ''Nicotiana'' species, common ...

'' and continued this research until he died in 1956. Early in his career he studied the genetics of ''

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species ...

'' but eventually he concentrated on the genetics of ''Nicotiana'' and gave his ''Drosophila'' stocks to the geneticist Walter Poppino Spencer (1898–1969). For about 20 years, up to 1926, Clausen collaborated with T. H. Goodspeed. From an analysis of chromosome pairing in hybrids of ''Nicotania'' species, Clausen and Goodspeed were the first to provide empirical evidence for Winge's hypothesis of plant hybridization following chromosome doubling. After 1934 Clausen collaborated extensively with Donald Ross Cameron (1907–1984). With Ernest B. Babcock he wrote ''Genetics in Relation to Agriculture'' (1918) with a second edition in 1927. After his return from Los Alamos, he served as the chair of UC Berkeley's department of genetics. Clausen was elected a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 1951. He was the president of the

Genetics Society of America The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is a scholarly membership society of more than 5,500 genetics researchers and educators, established in 1931. The Society was formed from the reorganization of the Joint Genetics Sections of the American Soc ...

in 1953. He married Mae Winifred Falls in 1916. He died from a heart attack in 1956, and his widow died in 1959.

Selected publications

* * * * * *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Clausen, Roy Elwood 1891 births 1956 deaths 20th-century American botanists American geneticists Oklahoma State University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences