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, 1977.2nd page
/ref> Brown was internationally renowned and sometimes referred to as "Mr. Chromosome." He was the president of the

International Congress of Genetics The International Congress of Genetics (ICG) is a five yearly conference for geneticists. The first ICG was held in 1898. Since 1973 It has been organized by the International Genetics Federation (IGF). The aim of the congress is to reflect on prog ...

. Brown was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1956 in the field of plant studies. 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. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota at the age of 20. He was mentored by

Barbara McClintock Barbara McClintock (June 16, 1902 – September 2, 1992) was an American scientist and cytogeneticist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927. There s ...

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. 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 and Marion S. Cave studied the interaction between

pollen Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophyt ...

and ovule of '' Lilium'' together. Spencer conducted cytological and karyological studies on tomatoes, ''Drosophila'' and was especially interested in maternal effects. 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. He identified the elimination of paternal genomes in male scale insects and noticed variations across several families and examined the evolution of these systems.

Personal life

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

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. Three suspects were identified. One, Jeanette Iles, 27, pleaded guilty to participating in the robbery/murder, and was sentenced to a life sentence.

Awards

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Spencer Wharton 1977 deaths American geneticists People from Vermillion, South Dakota Scientists from South Dakota 20th-century American scientists University of Minnesota alumni University of California, Davis alumni UC Berkeley College of Chemistry faculty 1977 murders in the United States 1918 births