Charles Leonard Huskins (1897-1953): botanist and cytogeneticist

‘Len’ Huskins was born in Walsall, England but at the age of nine emigrated with his parents to Alberta, Canada. He served in the Canadian Infantry and as an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps (later R.A.F.) in World War I. He returned to Canada to take his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Alberta and won an overseas scholarship which enabled him to study for a Ph.D. at the King’s College, London. He received his Ph.D. in 1927 and D.Sc. in 1934.

From 1925-1930 he worked at the John Innes Horticultural Institution, firstly as a volunteer worker (1925-27) and then as a member of staff in ‘cytology and plant breeding’. Huskins’ main research was on the genetics and cytology of oats, including an investigation of strains resistant to frit fly, and of wheat, initially using strains of spelt wheat contributed by Herman Nilsson-Ehle, Director of Svalöf plant breeding station in Sweden. His collaborations with other staff at the Institution led him to study the cytogenetics of a variety of plants, including barley, tomatoes, Sorghum, Spartina (a grass), Matthiola, Primula, and Capsicum. In 1928 he shared a new summer course of 10 lectures in general cytology at JIHI with C D Darlington.

In 1930 he left for a post as associate professor of Botany at McGill University in Montreal. When Darlington’s Recent advances in cytology (1932) appeared Huskins took exception to so many points that he ran out of space for marginal comments. His solution was to send his copy to the bindery to have it completely interleafed with blank pages.

Huskins was instrumental in the establishment of Canada’s first Department of Genetics at McGill in 1934 of which he became chairman. Under his direction the department rapidly became an active research centre. In 1942-43 he spent a year at Columbia University in New York on a Guggenheim Fellowship where he worked on a book on the cytology and genetics of plants, animals and man. In 1945 he went to the University of Wisconsin as Professor of Botany where he soon established a semi-autonomous section devoted to experimental cytology. His publications on cytogenetics, chromosome mechanics and structure gained him an international reputation and secured invitations to lecture and work in many parts of the world.

Link:

http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/45/5/249.pdf

See also: Arnold H. Sparrow, ‘Charles Leonard Huskins, 1897-1953: an obituary and appreciation’ Science magazine, 119 (5 March1954): 306-307