Roy Elwood Clausen (August 21, 1891,

Randall, Iowa Randall is a city in Hamilton County, Iowa, United States. The population was 154 at the time of the 2020 census. History A post office called Randall has been in operation since 1863. The city was named for Samuel J. Randall, a member of the ...

– August 21, 1956,

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

) was an American biochemist, botanist, plant geneticist, and

drosophilist {{Unreferenced, date=May 2019, bot=noref (GreenC bot) Drosophilist is a term used to refer to both the specific group of scientists trained in the laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morgan, and more generally any scientist who uses the fruit fly ''Drosophil ...

Biography

Clausen was the eldest of six siblings. As a boy with his family, he moved from Iowa to

Newkirk, Oklahoma Newkirk is a city in and the county seat of Kay County, Oklahoma, Kay County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 2,172 at the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census. History Newkirk is on land known as the Cherokee Outlet (popularly ...

, in 1900. In 1910, he graduated with a bachelor of science degree in agriculture from Stillwater's Oklahoma A&M (later renamed Oklahoma State University). In 1910, Clausen matriculated at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. There, Clausen graduated in 1912 with a second bachelor's degree, in agriculture, with a major in plant pathology. He graduated in 1914 with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, with a minor in plant pathology. His thesis advisor was

Thorburn Brailsford Robertson Thorburn Brailsford Robertson (4 March 1884 – 18 January 1930), generally known as Brailsford Robertson, was an Australian physiology, physiologist and biochemist. Early life Robertson was born in Edinburgh, the son of Thorburn Robertson and Sh ...

. From 1914 until his death in 1956, Clausen was a faculty member at UC Berkeley. During World War I, he was on an eighteen-month leave of absence when he served in the U.S. Army as a supply officer in a depot brigade. During World War II, he was on another leave of absence when he served in 1944 and 1945 as a personnel officer at the

Los Alamos Laboratory The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret scientific laboratory established by the Manhattan Project and overseen by the University of California during World War II. It was operated in partnership with the United State ...

. As a graduate assistant of

William Albert Setchell William Albert Setchell (April 15, 1864 – April 5, 1943) was an American botanist and marine phycologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, where he headed the Botany Department. Among his publications are the ''Phycotheca ...

, Clausen began investigating the genus ''

Nicotiana ''Nicotiana'' () is a genus of herbaceous plants and shrubs in the Family (biology), family Solanaceae, that is Native plant, indigenous to the Americas, Australia, Southwestern Africa and the South Pacific. Various ''Nicotiana'' species, common ...

'' and continued this research until he died in 1956. Early in his career, he studied the genetics of ''

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' (), from Ancient Greek δρόσος (''drósos''), meaning "dew", and φίλος (''phílos''), meaning "loving", is a genus of fly, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or p ...

'' but eventually concentrated on the genetics of ''Nicotiana'' and gave his ''Drosophila'' stocks to the geneticist Walter Poppino Spencer (1898–1969). For about twenty years, up to 1926, Clausen collaborated with Thomas Harper Goodspeed. From an analysis of chromosome pairing in hybrids of ''Nicotania'' species, Clausen and Goodspeed were the first to provide empirical evidence for

Winge Winge is a surname. It can be a short form of Germanic personal names starting with ''wini-'', "friend"; a habitational name originating in Sint-Joris-Winge; a variant of Van (der) Winden, a habitational name from Overwinden or Neerwinden, Belgium; ...

's hypothesis of plant hybridization following chromosome doubling. After 1934, Clausen collaborated extensively with Donald Ross Cameron (1907–1984). With Ernest B. Babcock, Clausen wrote ''Genetics in Relation to Agriculture'' (1918), with a second edition in 1927. After his return from Los Alamos, he served as the chair of UC Berkeley's department of genetics. Clausen was elected a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 1951. He was the president of the

Genetics Society of America The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is a scholarly membership society of more than 5,500 genetics researchers and educators, established in 1931. The Society was formed from the reorganization of the Joint Genetics Sections of the American Soc ...

in 1953. He married Mae Winifred Falls in 1916. He died from a heart attack in 1956, and his widow died in 1959.

Selected publications

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References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Clausen, Roy Elwood 1891 births 1956 deaths 20th-century American botanists American geneticists Oklahoma State University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences