Chris Lamb CBE, FRS (1950-2009), plant biologist

Professor Christopher John Lamb was appointed Director of the John Innes Centre in 1999. During his tenure he attracted and retained talent from all over the world, developing the Centre into one of the world’s flagship plant and microbial research centres. He was a keen champion of scientific partnerships within the Norwich Research Park, seeing this as key to driving forward the science underpinning sustainable food production, the interactions of organisms in the changing environment, and the complex interconnections between diet and health. His scientific excellence was recognised by his election to a fellowship of the Royal Society in 2008 and in June 2009 a CBE.

Chris Lamb trained in biochemistry at Cambridge University where he obtained a first-class degree and PhD, before moving to a research fellowship at Queen’s College, Oxford. In 1982 he joined the plant laboratory at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California where for 17 years he directed a highly regarded programme in plant biology. His research aimed to understand how plants defend themselves against pathogens and he was one of the first scientists to apply all the emerging tools of molecular biology to the field of plant disease resistance. In a series of influential publications he showed that the woody cell walls of plants are rapidly strengthened to form the first line of defence. Some of the cells quickly die, thus limiting the pathogen to a small group of dead or dying cells. Another tour-de-force was his identification of the small molecules of hydrogen peroxide and nitric oxide as mobile signals or messengers, produced as a consequence of early recognition of the pathogen, that move around the plant to prepare it to fight off disease. Tragically his career was cut short - he died suddenly from heart failure on 21st August 2009.

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