Rowland Biffen

Sir Rowland Harry Biffen FRS^[1] (28 May 1874 in Cheltenham – 12 July 1949)^[2] was a British botanist, mycologist, and geneticist.

He graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1898 and initially became a university demonstrator, researching fungi under Harry Marshall Ward. He published a number of papers on mycology between 1898 and 1902 and subsequently became president of the British Mycological Society in 1905 and again in 1930.^[3]

In 1908, Biffen was appointed the first professor of agricultural botany at Cambridge, a post he held till 1931. He won the Royal Society's Darwin Medal in 1920. Biffen was the first director of the Plant Breeding Institute, which became part of the John Innes Centre in 1994, and was an early proponent of using genetics to improve crop plants.^[4] Early in his career he traveled to the Americas to study rubber, but his primary research plant was wheat. Among the most important wheat varieties he bred were Little Joss and Yeoman.

He was knighted in 1935. He died in Cambridge. He had married Mary Hemus in 1899.

References

1. Engledow, F. L. (1950). "Rowland Harry Biffen. 1874-1949". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 7 (19): 9–9. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1950.0002.
2. "List of Fellows of the Royal Society 1660 – 2007 A - J: A complete listing of all Fellows and Foreign Members since the foundation of the Society". The Royal Society. July 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-06-23.
3. Ainsworth, G.C. (1996). Brief biographies of British mycologists. Stourbridge: British Mycological Society
4. Parascandola, M (April 1, 2004). "Book Review Plants, patients and the historian: (re)membering in the age of genetic engineering". Medical History. Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine. 48 (2). doi:10.1017/s002572730000747x.