Our History - John Innes Memory Bank

It was his new department for cell biology, the ill-fated dream enterprise of Kenneth Dodds, that brought me to Bayfordbury in 1958. Robert Brown FRS, who was at the time seeking an outlet for expanding his limited facilities in the Oxford Agricultural School, had agreed to take charge of the new department and sent me ahead to Bayfordbury to prepare the ground for his arrival, together with the rest of the team and some new recruits. I think I am correct in saying that when I arrived at Bayfordbury the building for the new department was still at the planning stage. A rather austere Dr. Dodds met me, I recall, seemingly vague what to do, eventually steered me up a winding staircase of stone steps into the attic of the mansion where he introduced me to two large rooms which had been emptied to serve as temporary laboratories, He then deserted me, leaving me more than a little stranded, with not even a chair to sit on. Dick Stickland, one of the new recruits, joined me later on and between us we managed to get chairs and a table or two. Dick proved to be very good with the draft plans for the new laboratories and suggested various amendments. I set about writing a paper on some of the research done in Oxford, the resulting effort of which did not meet in any respect with Dodds' approval. He berated me severely, going to great lengths to point out my inadequate layout and lack of scientific precision. However, it was much to his credit that he did then take me in hand and produced some very sound advice as to how to put together a scientific treatise, advice that in later years was to prove invaluable. Robert Brown eventually arrived from Oxford and took up residence at Broad Green. Other members of the team joined us in the attic. I think I am right in saying that work began on the new building while Robert Brown was in residence but regrettably his interest in the project did not last and he eventually resigned to take up the Regius Chair of Botany in the University of Edinburgh. Most of the team went with him leaving behind a few, among them Dick Stickland and myself. A period of uncertainty followed when I think the ARC sent Professor Thoday to supervise until a replacement for Robert Brown could be found. Ultimately, Henry Harris from Oxford took the post and saw through the completion and occupation of the new laboratories. However, the idyllic situation provided by the new facilities together with the glorious surroundings of the Bayfordbury estate proved to be short-lived. An announcement by Dr. Dodds of a proposed move to East Anglia and abandonment of the new laboratories caused an uproar. He himself appeared to be in favour, but Henry Harris and many members of staff, especially the geneticists, thought otherwise and gradually filtered away into other posts. The remaing staff argued desperately against the move and even went so far as to canvass the local MP for the establishment of a new University based on the Bayfordbury facilities, but these attempts proved fruitless. The move to Colney Lane was completwed in 1967 and the Institute began yet another milestone in its history along the bleak, windswept fields of Colney Lane. I have little recollection of the first few years in Colney. Dick Stickland helped once again, I recall, in designing prefabricated laboratories and later on in the design of the permanent buildings. Graham Hussey bewailed the loss of the controlled growth rooms which William Lawrence had established at Bayfordbury and though a suite of growth chambers was eventually installed at Colney by a commercial firm they were far from ideal and had the perverse habit of breaking down especially at weekends. The gardening staff worked wonders in landscaping areas around the laboratories and in housing a collection of exotics brought from Bayfordbury. New appointments in genetics were made to counteract the earlier losses but Dr. Dodds, who was offered the headship of genetics, but not the directorship, preferred to resign and left Norwich. The 50th anniversary of the Institute was celebrated while I was at Bayfordbury. The ensuing 50 years has seen a remarkable expension of staff and facilities, several different directors and the creation of new departments. It is all a far cry indeed from those early years in the mansion attic.

Before leaving school in 1943, I took an entrance examination for St Anne’s Society, Oxford.  This resulted in a letter from the Principal, in which she wrote that my work had reached Entrance standards, but owing to the regulations of the Ministry of Labour(?) and National Service, she was unable to offer me a place.  This meant that I had to find employment in an organisation deemed vital for the War effort.

Instead of accepting the first job on offer in an ammunition factory, I wrote a letter to the Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution, Dr CD Darlington, offering my services; and I was very fortunate in being offered a post as technical assistant to Dr Kenneth Mather.  The production of home-grown food was of vital importance in war-time Britain, as encapsulated in the mantra “Digging for Victory”, and this employment was passed by the authorities.  I worked without pay for a few weeks, after which I received a weekly wage of 35 shillings.  At the same time I attended evening classes in botany and chemistry, intended to lead to a BSc degree at London University.

Of the experiments I was involved in, assessing the yields of tomatoes grown out of doors was probably most germane to the war effort, as was the breeding of sweetcorn, but there were also breeding experiments on Primula sinensis and Antirrhinum.  Much of this work was done outside, which was pleasant.

Another investigation carried out in Mather’s department was on the genetics of bristle numbers in Drosophila.  The painstaking work of counting bristles was done by Brian Harrison, but in those days, statistical analysis was also a time-consuming task; and, after being given detailed instructions, I frequently spent many hours computing on a noisy, semi-automatic Monroe calculating machine.

When I graduated, in 1947, the war had ended, and this seemed to be a chance to go to University, which had eluded me first time round.  I applied to University College London for admission as a PhD student, giving genetics as my first choice, and mycology as second.  My application went to JBS Haldane, who thought I might be a suitable candidate for a project on fungal genetics, in which Hans Kalmus had expressed an interest.  I was taken on, and joined the Galton Laboratory.  PhD students turned out to be something of a novelty in the Department, and the supervision I received was minimal.  But the experience in laboratory routine that I had learned at the John Innes stood me in good stead in maintaining my stocks of Coprinus lagopus and studying the offspring of crosses I duly obtained my PhD in 1950.

Returning to the subject of war-time Britain, there can be little doubt that John Innes compost played an important role in the success of the “Digging for Victory” campaign; and this fact alone would make the compost a strong candidate for the John Innes key achievement.  Nevertheless I have decided to vote for another innovation that is more directly targeted at the 21st century, i.e. Darlington’s proposal of the “plasmagene”.  Notwithstanding his predilection for chromosomes, Darlington envisaged the cytoplasm as an additional bearer of heredity, and was not afraid to say so.  While this hypothesis made little impact at the time, today the number of publication on the subject of mitochondrial DNA, cited by PubMed, is rapidly approaching the 40000 mark; and abnormal mitochondria are known to play a pivotal role in the causation of an increasing number of diseases.  It is to be hoped that advances in cellular energy metabolism will help to make sense of genetic data that are at present puzzling.

Gordon Rowley - Keeper of the National Rose Species Collection, JIHI Bayfordbury

During early 2008 JIC Curator Sarah Wilmot visited Gordon Rowley, Keeper of the National Rose Species Collection JIHI, in his home. Below are some audio extracts from Sarah's interview which contain some colourful insights into the characters and events around the Institute during the 1950s.

Views on CD Darlington 1.9Mb 2:44 mins

About the Fruit Fly as a tool of genetics 760K 1:00 mins

Views on William Lawrence & John Newell, the originators of John Innes Compost 590K 50 secs

Views on Len La Cour & AN Other 2.5Mb 3:30 mins

Views on Kenneth Mather & MB Crane 1.9Mb 2:44 mins

The National Rose Survey project 2.2Mb 3:00 mins

Distinguished visitors to JIHI Bayfordbury 3.5Mb 5:10 mins

A little known fact about Haldane 2.2Mb 2:45 mins

The Department of Cytology, one of four departments in the Institution, occupied a vast room called the Kit Kat Room at the rear of the building with appropriately large windows overlooking lawns, ornamental flower beds and vistas of parkland and the arboretum: the word idyllic comes to mind. In the centre of this large area there were two big island benches, each holding four work stations. Each work station was equipped with an old-fashioned chair, with arms if you were lucky but not necessarily very comfortable, a monocular microscope, a microscope lamp, an anglepoise lamp, a book shelf, a spirit lamp and probably an ashtray, but more of that later. All round the interior walls, interrupted only by magnificent double mahogany doors, were benches and shelves for the equipment and chemicals needed for the work in hand.

Looking back on it now, I am more shocked at the distinctly relaxed and almost indifferent way with which we all handled the various chemicals that were in regular use; in particular osmic acid, colchicine and chloroform to mention just a few. The atmosphere was mostly of peace and quiet concentration, broken only by the gentle tapping of bone or ivory rods on microscope slides, the chink of bottles or the clatter of a microtome. Sometimes one of the occupants would get up to look at someone else's preparation in order to discuss what was to be seen or perhaps to help in making a decision. If a photograph was to be taken, using black-painted plywood cameras made in the institution in the 1930 when it was at Merton by a Mr Osterstock, then there was a call for quiet because any vibration from the wooden floors could ruin an image.

The other component of the atmosphere was cigarette smoke, hence the ashtrays already mentioned. Len La Cour, among others, was a committed smoker and, on behalf of the John Innes Society he bought and sold tobacco which he kept in a locked cupboard in the lab. He alone kept and guarded the key to this cupboard but it was passed to me, a non smoker, when he went away on holiday. Cigarettes were meant to be sold at predetermined times but occasionally someone who was desperate for a smoke would have to come into the lab and approach a sometimes taciturn Len and hope to be served. Mostly they would be successful but not without some grumbling noises from Len.

The most significant interruption to the peace of the room was when the door from Cyril Darlington's study opened and the great man himself burst in, usually carrying a book, an article or a manuscript. He would then call us all to one end of the room to gather round the blackboard where he would probably lambaste some poor author for something he had written with which Darlington did not agree. He would then pounce upon us and ask us to show where the poor individual had got it wrong. If we couldn't spot it then there would be a cry of, "Have I wasted all these years and taught you nothing about chromosomes?" Another memory is of times when you went into his room to discuss a paper that you had written and which he had to approve for publication. If something really critical was coming as he read, you would literally see his ears twitch and move backwards and forwards just before he spoke, and we were all well aware of this danger signal.

I was appointed as a plant physiologist in the Department of Physiology and Plant Culture under William Lawrence and began work at Bayfordbury on January 1st. 1957. The Institute at the time was a relatively small organisation. There were about 120 on the staff, 46 scientific posts and 36 gardeners in addition to administration and maintenance. There were eight of us in Lawrence’s Department which occupied the upper floor of the west wing of the mansion. Bayfordbury had been the country seat of the Clinton-Baker family from 1762 to 1945 when it was acquired by the John Innes Trust. The mansion afforded a panoramic view of the countryside in the upper Lea Valley and was set in most attractive gardens surrounded by a landscape of meadows, arable fields and woodland. Almost at any time when work was not pressing one could wander out into these 160 hectares to get a little exercise, to think or just to admire the beauty of the surroundings. The glasshouse complex occupied a site of just over half a hectare about 200 metres from the Mansion, beyond an area of mature gardens planted with a wide variety of native and exotic trees. The main corridors in the glasshouse complex housed a collection of tropical and subtropical flowering plants and shrubs. On one side of the gardens was an artificial lake of about one hectare surrounded by willows and alder. In warm weather, staff used to swim there at lunchtime, in the evenings and at weekends. On the other side of the lake was the old stable block converted for gardeners’ accommodation and maintenance workshops. Nearby, the walled garden contained much of the National Rose Species Collection. We always took visitors on a tour of the grounds and few failed to comment favourably on the beauty of the estate.

The Library occupied the spacious former dining room in the west wing of the mansion. It had tall elegant Georgian windows and an Adam ceiling from which two large chandeliers once hung. The Librarian had a desk in a smaller adjoining room which contained a long polished mahogany table on which the current journals were set. The Library was stacked high with books and bound journals. The open shelves also housed what is now the John Innes Special Collection. These most valuable volumes (now kept in a controlled atmosphere under conditions of high security) could be taken down from the shelves and perused at any time or shown to visitors. With a relatively small staff, the library was always a quiet and secluded place to read, browse or think. With its view of the cedars on the south lawn, and with its oak shelving and rows of leather bound volumes it had an old-time atmosphere, an age away from the modern library with its air of efficiency and high-tech electronic aids.

As in most small organsations, everyone knew everyone else and there was a keen sense of community. Most belonged to the John Innes Society and activities such as play reading and country dancing took place in the evenings. There were tennis courts on the far side of the glasshouse complex and a cricket team played at weekends on the pitch on the front lawn. Some of these activities, however, gradually declined over the years, largely as a result of the Director’s (Dr. Dodds) dislike of staff being on the premises out of working hours.

The Department of Physiology at Bayfordbury

In the 1950’s after carrying out extensive research on glasshouse design and the use of artificial lighting, William Lawrence was anxious to move into plant physiology. The Department of Garden Research had become the Department of Physiology and Pant Culture on condition that a physiologist was appointed. That person was me. My brief was to investigate the effects of light and temperature on the growth and development of young tomato plants.  The results would not only be of importance to a basic understanding of how plants react to their environment but could also be helpful to the glasshouse industry in the commercial production of tomatoes. My first task, however, was to help Lawrence in the construction of controlled environment facilities (or Growth Rooms), which at the time were a novelty. Most research on growth and development had up that time been carried out in glasshouses where there was limited control of temperature and light intensity. By growing plants entirely under artificial light, complete control of the environment would be possible. Such facilities are now taken for granted and available from many specialist suppliers. Because controlled environment rooms then hardly existed in this country, we had to start from scratch and design from basic principles.

Lawrence and his team were well qualified to do this. Lawrence had been Curator of the Institute for many years and had carried out comprehensive research into glasshouse design and the use of artificial light. Some years before, a physicist, Ray Whittle, was appointed to assist Lawrence in this work and to devise the recording instruments, work for which he was later awarded a Ph.D.  Lawrence was also on excellent terms with key members of the maintenance staff: the electronics engineer Ron Garner and the electrician John Munn. At the start of the Growth Room project a carpenter, Albert Fitter, a craftsman and former cabinet maker joined the team. His practical expertise was to prove invaluable in solving certain constructional problems as well as conferring a highly professional standard on the finished product.

The space available was a basement room in the mansion. Six 'walk-in' rooms were eventually built, three each side of a central corridor. In each room a bank of 32 fluorescent lights was housed in a separate cooled compartment which formed the low ceiling to the growing area, a bench 1.3 x 1.6 metres. The bench could be continuously adjusted to different heights below the lights. By careful positioning of the individual lights and the use of side reflectors, the distribution of light intensity across the bench was made as even as possible. The air-conditioning equipment (the circulation fan, cooling coils, the heater and humidifier) was housed in a duct across the ceiling of the room. After consulting specialists at the National Physical Laboratory, we achieved a uniform flow of air across the bench with tapered ducting and horizontally placed baffles.

When the rooms were completed we had many visits from those constructing their own facilities in other parts of the country and abroad and many of the controlled environment facilities built at that time and later developed commercially owed something to our pioneering work.

William Lawrence

I worked under William Lawrence for nearly eight years. He was one of the most friendly and affable scientists I have ever met. He had great drive and energy, a tremendous zest for work and an insatiable curiosity about almost everything. He was always coming up with new ideas, sometimes absurd but often thought provoking with a promise of something worthwhile. He also had an ebullient sense of humour with a constant stream of highly amusing and often acerbic comments on Institute matters and personalities. If he had just heard a good joke or some amusing story, he could not resist sharing it with any of his staff who happened to be around. Lawrence has described his career in his excellent autobiography “Catch the Tide”. He left school at the age of fourteen and joined the Institute in 1913 as a garden boy. He gradually became involved in more responsible jobs in the gardens and glasshouses and after a spell at Kew Gardens began to participate in some of the Institute’s research projects. With no formal qualifications he showed considerable initiative in educating himself and no doubt made the most of his daily contact with some of the most distinguished scientists of the day such as C.D. Darlington and J.B.S. Haldane. Lawrence began to develop a considerable programme of genetical work which included his work on Dahlia and Streptocarpus (which eventually became a popular houseplant).As well as a stream of scientific papers, he collaborated with M.B. Crane on writing The Genetics of Garden Plants, which served as an influential and useful introduction to genetics.   The first Director, William Bateson, recognised his ability and did much to encourage him, but dissuaded him from bothering to obtain any academic qualifications, assuring him that he would always be accepted at the John Innes.Unfortunately that view was not shared by Sir Daniel Hall, who succeeded Bateson as Director in 1926. Inspite of Lawrence’s successful and growing involvement in genetical research, in 1932 he was moved to the post of Curator and obliged to concentrate mostly on horticulture. This was probably the best thing that could have happened to Lawrence given his history and the circumstances of the time. As a result, when horticulture was still based largely on tradition, Lawrence was able to bring a fresh and much more scientific approach to many important problems. These included soil composition, soil sterilisation and methods of controlling light and temperature in the glasshouse. His many books on these subjects included Science and the Glasshouse and Soil Sterilisation which became standard texts. In collaboration with John Newell he developed standardised growing media for experimental plants. These became known and, the formulae published, as the John Innes Composts, names which have become almost synonymous with the Institute. Lawrence was later made Head of the Garden Department which became the Department of Physiology and Plant Culture shortly before I was appointed. It is understandable that Lawrence wanted to be remembered most for his work on genetics and the artificial control of the plant environment in the glasshouse and growth room but his impact on the horticultural world was immense and widely recognised.

As a long time member of the John Innes staff and later Secretary of the Genetical Society, Lawrence knew personally all the leading geneticists and cytologists of the day and was able to relate numerous anecdotes concerning these personalities. Through the privilege of knowing him I was able to gain some knowledge and insight into the early days of the John Innes Institute. 

Dr. Dodds (Director 1954 – 66)

Working under William Lawrence was very pleasant. He encouraged a friendly informal atmosphere in the Department and had a healthy disrespect for unnecessary authority and red tape. He took the view, shared by most workers that scientists do research because they enjoy doing it and find it absorbing.  There should therefore be no need for strict hours during a Monday to Friday regime. However, it was evident from the start of my appointment that Lawrence's stimulating and easy going attitude prevailed in spite of Dodds’ Directorship.

Dodds couldn’t have been more different. When he was appointed in 1954 to replace C.D. Darlington, he was apparently the only candidate in an otherwise distinguished short list who did not provoke strong disagreement among the appointments committee. It seems to have been a classic case of the compromise candidate being appointed. He was obviously aware of this but never alluded to it except at William Lawrence’s retirement presentation. Referring to his own appointment he let slip that “they had to scrape the barrel”.

Dodds was a man of few but loud words. Terse edicts would appear on the Director’s notice board announcing any changes at the Institute. During the whole time that I knew him he hardly ever showed any enthusiasm for anything. What ever fascination he had for science he kept to himself. This contrasted with most other senior scientists I have known who have been eager to share their enthusiasm with others. I felt rather sorry for him as without enthusiasm one can neither teach nor lead research. He seemed to have a built-in Civil Service mentality. He did, however, have a gift for clear expression and was extremely good at editing papers, a most useful attribute for a Director.

Dodds discouraged staff from meeting on the premises after work. He would descend the steps outside the main entrance punctually at 5.30 pm each day and expect everyone else to drop what they were doing and leave the building. We gradually learned to ignore this and came and went as we chose. One of Dodds’ problems was his colour blindness which prevented him from appreciating the vast range of colour of flowers and foliage at Bayfordbury. He hated anything horticultural and was responsible for expunging the word (admittedly no longer appropriate) from the title of the Institute. The John Innes Horticultural Institution officially became the John Innes Institute in January 1960, at the time of the 50th. Anniversary Celebrations.

During the spring of 1960 Dodds went on a trip to Peru to find new potato species material and left Lawrence in charge of the Institute including the organisation of the 50th. Anniversary Celebrations to be held on an Open Day on June 2nd. Lawrence tackled this with his usual energy and enthusiasm. "We are going to have a proper celebration”, he told me, “Dodds just wanted tea on the lawn with the Trustees and a few guests”. Lawrence set about producing the Anniversary Booklet describing the history and present structure of the Institute. He also got each Department to stage exhibits of current work of the Institute and these were to be displayed in the Lecture Room. Dodds arrived back from Peru just as the exhibition was being assembled. The expression on his face showed that he clearly disapproved.  One day he came in and commented in a loud voice to some of us working on the exhibits: “I suppose all this is to exhibit the work that we should otherwise be getting on with.”

Dodd's bureaucratic state of mind seemed to be summed up by an incident at the end of the Open Day. There had been a fault in one of the growth rooms and I had to stay late to deal with it. As I had had to keep a lunch appointment, I had driven back to the Institute a few minutes before the opening ceremony by which time most of the guests had arrived in their cars and filled all the available parking places. Some of those arriving last had parked under one of the large cedar trees on the front lawn so I parked there as well. When I emerged about six o'clock after everyone else had gone home, I found my car standing alone under the cedar trees.  There was a note stuck to the windscreen which read: “Do not park on the lawn. K.S. Dodds.”

Gordon Rowley

  I made many good friends at Bayfordbury, prominent among them was Gordon Rowley who was appointed in 1953 to look after the National Rose Species Collection. He is a leading expert on the history and genetics of roses and an extremely knowledgeable botanist. He is also an expert on succulents and has written extensively on the subject. He was one of our most vivid personalities at Bayfordbury with bounding energy and wide interests. For most of the year, he wore shorts and multi-coloured shirts, which in the rather sedate 1950’s was considered somewhat outrageous. Full of extrovert humour he was unable to resist cracking jokes most of the time.  He used to slide down the banisters saying it was “quicker by rail”.  On one occasion, Neil Gilbert, the statistician, gave an Institute seminar and spent some minutes covering the blackboard with (to most of us) somewhat obscure mathematical formulae on capture/recapture statistics. When he had finished, Neil nonchalantly looked up and inquired if everyone were happy. Gordon resolved the awkward silence that followed by answering quietly at the back: “divinely!” In the basement corridor, the overhead heating and water pipes had their usual lagging wound round with barbed wire to prevent Rowley from swinging on them. For many years he wrote very entertaining Christmas Pantomimes full of topical humour and wit.   Gordon is not only a keen photographer and cinematographer but an ardent music lover.  When I started at Bayfordbury, I had equipped myself with state of the art receiving and recording equipment.  Gordon had several large tape recorders and was always updating his radio equipment.  We used to record music from what was then the Third Programme (later BBC Radio 3) and exchange tapes. We sometimes attended concerts together in London. Once one had got used to his eccentricities, he was delightful company with a great sense of fun. In 1961 he left the John Innes to become a lecturer at Reading University where the Rose Collection was relocated, a double loss to the Institute.

It was his new department for cell biology, the ill-fated dream enterprise of Kenneth Dodds, that brought me to Bayfordbury in 1958. Robert Brown FRS, who was at the time seeking an outlet for expanding his limited facilities in the Oxford Agricultural School, had agreed to take charge of the new department and sent me ahead to Bayfordbury to prepare the ground for his arrival, together with the rest of the team and some new recruits. I think I am correct in saying that when I arrived at Bayfordbury the building for the new department was still at the planning stage. A rather austere Dr. Dodds met me, I recall, seemingly vague what to do, eventually steered me up a winding staircase of stone steps into the attic of the mansion where he introduced me to two large rooms which had been emptied to serve as temporary laboratories, He then deserted me, leaving me more than a little stranded, with not even a chair to sit on. Dick Stickland, one of the new recruits, joined me later on and between us we managed to get chairs and a table or two. Dick proved to be very good with the draft plans for the new laboratories and suggested various amendments. I set about writing a paper on some of the research done in Oxford, the resulting effort of which did not meet in any respect with Dodds' approval. He berated me severely, going to great lengths to point out my inadequate layout and lack of scientific precision. However, it was much to his credit that he did then take me in hand and produced some very sound advice as to how to put together a scientific treatise, advice that in later years was to prove invaluable. Robert Brown eventually arrived from Oxford and took up residence at Broad Green. Other members of the team joined us in the attic. I think I am right in saying that work began on the new building while Robert Brown was in residence but regrettably his interest in the project did not last and he eventually resigned to take up the Regius Chair of Botany in the University of Edinburgh. Most of the team went with him leaving behind a few, among them Dick Stickland and myself. A period of uncertainty followed when I think the ARC sent Professor Thoday to supervise until a replacement for Robert Brown could be found. Ultimately, Henry Harris from Oxford took the post and saw through the completion and occupation of the new laboratories. However, the idyllic situation provided by the new facilities together with the glorious surroundings of the Bayfordbury estate proved to be short-lived. An announcement by Dr. Dodds of a proposed move to East Anglia and abandonment of the new laboratories caused an uproar. He himself appeared to be in favour, but Henry Harris and many members of staff, especially the geneticists, thought otherwise and gradually filtered away into other posts. The remaing staff argued desperately against the move and even went so far as to canvass the local MP for the establishment of a new University based on the Bayfordbury facilities, but these attempts proved fruitless.

The move to Colney Lane was completed in 1967 and the Institute began yet another milestone in its history along the bleak, windswept fields of Colney Lane. I have little recollection of the first few years in Colney. Dick Stickland helped once again, I recall, in designing prefabricated laboratories and later on in the design of the permanent buildings. Graham Hussey bewailed the loss of the controlled growth rooms which William Lawrence had established at Bayfordbury and though a suite of growth chambers was eventually installed at Colney by a commercial firm they were far from ideal and had the perverse habit of breaking down especially at weekends. The gardening staff worked wonders in landscaping areas around the laboratories and in housing a collection of exotics brought from Bayfordbury. New appointments in genetics were made to counteract the earlier losses but Dr. Dodds, who was offered the headship of genetics, but not the directorship, preferred to resign and left Norwich.

The 50th anniversary of the Institute was celebrated while I was at Bayfordbury. The ensuing 50 years has seen a remarkable expension of staff and facilities, several different directors and the creation of new departments. It is all a far cry indeed from those early years in the mansion attic.

When I was an undergraduate student, I was fortunate enough to get a summer job at the Agricultural Research Council’s Plant Virus Research Unit (VRU) in Cambridge.   The head of the unit was Roy Markham, who would later become the first Norwich-based Director of the John Innes.  Within days of my starting, Markham asked me – a twenty-year-old undergraduate student with virtually no laboratory experience – to harvest an entire greenhouse of tobacco plants infected with tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and purify the virus for a collaborator.   As he showed me the plants, I reached forward to hold a leaf to better inspect the symptoms and had my hand hit by a ruler that suddenly had appeared in his hands, with the admonition that “we don’t do that”.  Knuckles rapped, literally and metaphorically, in the first week; but it got worse ……..  I was given a method of preparing the virus that required extraction with a large volume of buffer followed by differential centrifugation – slow spin to remove insoluble debris, fast spin to pellet the virus, re-suspend the pellet in buffer and repeat the process several times.   The problem was the immense volume for the first and second centrifugations, so I sought advice from the protein chemist Maurice Rees on how to deal with this; he advised me to add ammonium sulphate, which would “salt out” the virus and give me a highly concentrated preparation early on.   This I did, and consequently was able to present Markham with a TMV sample in record time.   He asked how I had managed to be so fast; I told him that I had used ammonium sulphate and he exclaimed “Oh no, it was supposed to be monodispersed!”   I didn’t know that, nor did I know the effect of ammonium sulphate on monodispersity, but I didn’t need to ask.   He then picked up the ‘phone, in my presence, called the intended recipient of the TMV, who turned out to be Aaron Klug, and said “Aaron, some idiot in the lab has prepared the TMV with ammonium sulphate, do you want to speak to him?”  Aaron clearly didn’t, but since I had no idea of the identity of “Aaron” (he was to become a Nobel prize-winner, knight of the realm and president of the Royal Society), I wasn’t terribly bothered one way or the other, just irritated that I was being castigated for something that wasn’t my suggestion.   I apologised and went back to the lab..   The next day I expected to have a little difficulty with Markham, but quite the opposite happened – he must have spoken with Rees about my “idiocy” and Maurice had told him that it was his idea, not mine.  As a consequence I obviously had picked up brownie points for not pointing the finger, because at 11.30 Markham called in to take Rees to the Traveller’s Rest, the pub on Huntingdon Road at the head of the approach road to the lab., and suggested that they “take the boy, too”.   I was duly driven the hundred yards or so to the pub in Markham’s twin-carburettor Ford Corsair (he was a bit of a car buff), treated to a Guinness and with immense kindness thereafter.   I learned more in six weeks at the VRU than I could ever have learnt in three years of student practical classes, including the certainty that I wanted to become a research scientist.  

I was accepted for PhD studies at John Innes in 1968 and I thought I’d recount how it came about, because it typified the way in which things operated in those days and was in sharp contrast to the system that operated when I left JIC in 2006.

I was in my final year as a biology student at the University of East Anglia and had been offered a job at the British Sugar research station, which occupied labs adjacent to the Institute of Food Research, at the temptingly large salary of £1400 per annum. The professor of biochemistry at UEA, D.D.Davies, considered that I would be unwise to accept and thought that I should do a Ph.D.. He knew that I’d had a summer job with Roy Markham, the director of the Virus Research Unit in Cambridge, so he phoned him, in my presence, in July 1968. He simply said that he had this student, Rod Casey, whom he expected to get a first, and wondered if Roy would be interested in taking him as a Ph.D. student? Apparently Markham said that he remembered me from the summer placement and that I’d got on well with Ted Parker (the head of the engineering workshops), so he went off to ask Ted what he thought. He returned to the phone to tell D.D.D. that Ted thought I was a good chap so yes, I could do a Ph.D. starting that October.

Thus, on the say-so of the head of the workshops, I embarked on the career of a research biochemist, beginning with a Ph.D. supervised by Roy Markham, who was about to become the first director of the John Innes Institute at Norwich, and Maurice Rees, one of the most rigorous and experienced protein chemists of his time. It was quite some time before I realised how lucky I’d been.

The first JI scientist I met was David Hopwood when he lectured to biology undergraduates at UEA - that was in 1970. I remember his lectures were very hard to understand, although we recognised how important he was and were never late. Altogether more vivid are my memories of Keith Roberts and his colleagues - PhD students all, acting (sic!) as demonstrators in my 2nd year practicals on Hfr mutants. My third year virology experiments were at JII; I remember we were using Nicotiana and we were banned from taking cigarrettes into the greenhouses. It took me 35 years to get my foot into the door as an employee - but I made it.

After two years in the US following our PhDs at Reading, when Steve was a post doc at Boyce Thompson, Cornell and I was a post doc in Plant Pathology at Cornell, Steve got a post doc in the Woolhouse lab, despite Harold's warnings not to come back to the UK, and I got a job as a ward receptionist at the hospital. After a few months Steve mentioned that Harold wanted an assistant in the office with a science background to help with writing general science articles and after dinner speeches, and was I interested. Of course I jumped at the chance and so HWW asked me to pop along after work one day to meet him and have a chat. When I arrived I was told he was in the pool but that he was expecting me and I was to go and find him there. So I walked up and down as he swam and he interviewed me. He got out and made his way towards the changing rooms. I pointed out that I didn't think I could follow him any further, to which he replied "Quite so, meet me in my office". I waited there with Steve and the rest of the lab who were sitting round his large T shaped table in what is now roughly where the DSB meeting room is, having tea. The lab freely walked in and out of his office and used it as a tea, reading or meeting room, the door was rarely closed. Harold appeared, dominating the doorway, quoting Macbeth, something to do with the trees by Hill House, and then laid out on the table to stretch his back, a position he was frequently found in, often asleep. He asked if I could type, to which I replied "No, but I can learn", and then he offered me the job. The post had not been advertised and I don't think HR knew much about it either, and here I have been ever since in various roles and offices but none more happier than being challenged by Harold to do all manner of things and having endless laughs with Jeni Fox who taught me all I know about office management. The day Harold told us he was leaving to go to the Waite Institute was sad but the day we heard he had died was devastating. I feel honoured to have known him and privileged to have worked for him during a fascinating period of JI's history when The Sainsbury Lab was formed, PBI was privatised and he appointed three new group leaders, Dean, Harberd and Coupland. I often wonder what he would make of it all now...

The dramatic advances made on Streptomyces over the last 40 years are indissolubly linked to the figure of Sir David Hopwood and to the John Innes Centre. A privileged witness of this period and a close colleague of Hopwood, Keith Chater outlines in the accompanying article certain moments of Hopwood’s scientific career, which were particularly fruitful from the scientific point of view. I am honored for having had the privilege of sharing with him not only bench and flasks but also, in particular, two unforgettable years of my life. 

I arrived to Hopwood’s lab one morning in September of 1979, with an EMBO fellowship in my pocket and a Ph.D. on the biochemistry and mechanism of action of a group of antibiotics named microcins, discovered by Carlos Asensio a few years earlier.  During my PhD I was impressed by the pioneer work of Hopwood on the genetic analysis of antibiotic production, which later on was crucial in the industrial improvement of antibiotic production. In those early years of the development of molecular biology, I was captivated by a paper of Hopwood’s group showing that both antibiotic production and resistance were coded by a plasmid. Studies on microcins led by the group of Fernando Baquero seemed to also be the case. Suddenly, it all became clear to me: in my postdoc I decided to tackle the antibiotic methylenomycin, whose production and resistance genes were coded by a plasmid (SCP1) from Streptomyces coelicolor A3. Physical isolation of the plasmid was essential for more refined studies. Unfortunately, the SCP1 plasmid proved impossible to isolate by conventional procedures. In spite of the many different methods and approaches suggested by my colleagues at the John Innes Centre, I still had no luck in isolating the elusive SCP1. In those days Hopwood and I came across an article of Okanishi et al. in which they had detected, by electron microscopy only, a plasmid (pSV1) in the original methylenomycin-producing Streptomyces violaceus-ruber strain. The next series of questions were obvious: Could pSV1 be related to SCP1 and also code for methylenomycin production and resistance? Could pSV1 be isolable? The answers to both these questions were, in fact, positive. Plasmid pSV1 was isolated and its size was estimated to be about 110 MDa. At the same time we demonstrated that it coded for either methylenomycin production or resistance genes. As Chater indicates in his article, the mystery of the SCP1 plasmid needed another ten more years to be clarified, but this is already another story. 

I have the privilege of having been the first of a long list of Spanish postdocs who worked with Hopwood. I think that one of the reasons for attracting so many people to his laboratory was his rare ability to combine scientific and human excellence.  From him I learned all that I know about Streptomyces plus a continuous lesson of humbleness. Hopwood had a broad and restless mind; he was always interested in other cultures, in any aspect of science and art, in Chinese food, in wine and in music, particularly the guitar. I shall never forget the evening of the 25th of February 1981, when the Hopwoods (Joyce and David) invited my wife Rosario and myself to a concert of Spanish guitar in the Strangers Hall to celebrate the failure of the military putsch in Spain two days before. Luckily, I did not need to make use of his generosity to remain in the UK, should the putsch have succeeded.  Not many people know that David Hopwood has also played an essential role in the promotion of Biotechnology in the European Community. In fact, he was invited by the European Commission (EC) to provide advice for the preparation of the first research and training European programme in Biotechnology, the Biomolecular Engineering Programme (BEP) of the European Community that existed from 1982 to 1986. Although it is now past history, its decisive contribution to the “Europeanization” of research has made this pioneering activity an outstanding landmark for any observer of EC biotechnology. The recognition of the European dimension of the Streptomyces research was also due to Hopwood. Thanks to the recommendations stemming from a seminal meeting chaired by Hopwood in Brussels in 1987, Community R&D benefits from outstanding collaborative R&D projects on the biotechnology of Streptomyces.

I was a Professor at the University of Warwick in the seventies when I first met Harold Woolhouse, the then Director of the JI, and I was invited to Norwich to give a seminar on animal viruses and interferon. I had links with the plant virologists but had never been to Norwich or the JI before; it seemed a long way from the English Midlands.

I left Warwick in 1982 to help start a plant biotechnology company in Toronto and so became involved in plant science, then came back to the UK in 1987, when I was appointed as the third Vice-Chancellor of UEA. Harold was on to this like a flash; though he had already upset people, I learned subsequently, by making a speech at the UEA Senate saying that “we must cut out the soft underbelly of research at UEA”, he wanted cooperation with UEA. He was right, but there was a lot to do. He was coming to Canada and we met in Montreal in August 1987 when he told me of his plans for bringing the Cambridge Lab to Norwich, starting the Sainsbury Laboratory and hopefully moving the Nitrogen Fixation Unit from Sussex. I was very impressed and said I would do all I could to help when I arrived. As VC, I was Chairman of the John Innes Council and therefore working closely with the JI Trustees and Harold as Director. The University welcomed the scientists who were being transferred, often rather unwillingly, from Cambridge to Norwich. The Plant Breeding Laboratory at Cambridge had been privatized by Margaret Thatcher and a large sum of money paid for it turned out to be the property of the trustees of the Cambridge Laboratory. Harold went to a bank in Cambridge and opened an account with several million pounds [I forget how much] and this provided the funds for the new laboratory.

The Gatsby Foundation had been persuaded by Harold to invest in Norwich and that led to the Sainsbury Laboratory and we were able to make outstanding appointments to lead it. Harold then set his eyes on moving the Nitrogen Fixation Laboratory from Sussex. But he left about this time to go to Australia, mainly because BBSRC would not extend his post beyond 60 [what a foolish thing to do]. However Dick Flavell took over as Director [Harold’s idea from the beginning] and continued the developments in a splendid way. I went with Dick to Sussex to help persuade their reluctant scientists to move to Norwich. The University helped as much as it could, offering academic appointments, teaching, validating graduate students and agreeing to pass a substantial amount of the overhead that came with each graduate student to the JIC.

So there were three splendid research institutions on the same site, the JIC, consisting of the original John Innes, the Cambridge Laboratory and the Sainsbury Laboratory, the Institute for Food Research and the University and a lot of my job in the late eighties and early nineties was to try and help build links between us. We were all under pressure, money was getting tighter every year and working together was a huge advantage. So we looked for a name for what we were doing, and UEA sponsored a competition for the name, offering a case of wine as a prize. It was won by a scientist from BIO and although Norwich Research Park seems the obvious title in retrospect, no one had thought of it beforehand.

I retired in 1995, moving to Cambridge and Dick Flavell went to the US after I had retired so I never worked with Chris Lamb although I got to know him when we moved back to Norwich in 2006. So three outstanding directors – Harold Woolhouse, Dick Flavell, and Chris Lamb – have contributed to the splendid organisation we have now, which together with the University forms one of the major science complexes in the UK, and focused on an area that’s been identified as one of the major strategic objectives for the future of Britain and the developing world – sustainable agriculture producing sufficient food to feed the world burgeoning population.