Spencer Wharton Brown (28 November 1918 – 10 June 1977) was a professor and cyto-

geneticist A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic process ...

. He taught and did research 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 ...

, from 1945 until his murder on June 10, 1977.2nd page
/ref> Brown was internationally renowned and sometimes referred to as "Mr. Chromosome." He was the president of the

International Congress of Genetics The International Congress of Genetics (ICG) is a five yearly conference for geneticists. The first ICG was held in 1898. Since 1973 It has been organized by the International Genetics Federation (IGF). The aim of the congress is to reflect on prog ...

. Brown was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in 1956 in the field of plant studies. He was the first to identify what is called paternal genome elimination in

scale insects Scale insects are small insects of the order Hemiptera, suborder Sternorrhyncha. Of dramatically variable appearance and extreme sexual dimorphism, they comprise the infraorder Coccomorpha which is considered a more convenient grouping than the ...

Life and work

Brown was born in

Vermillion, South Dakota Vermillion (; "The Place Where Vermilion is Obtained") is a city and the county seat of Clay County. It is in the southeastern corner of South Dakota, United States, and is the state's 12th-most populous city. According to the 2020 census, the ...

. He received his undergraduate degree from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

at the age of 20. He was mentored by

Barbara McClintock Barbara McClintock (June 16, 1902 – September 2, 1992) was an American scientist and cytogenetics, cytogeneticist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University ...

for three years at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

. When McClintock moved to the Carnegie Institute, Brown transferred to the

University of California at Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institution was ...

, where he received his Ph.D. in genetics for his study on Californian blackberries (''Rubus'' spp.) one year later, in 1942. During the war he worked briefly in a shipyard as a welder and afterwards took an interest in psychotherapy and sought to become a professional and obtained admission to the Stanford and UCSF medical schools but decided not to follow it. He became an assistant professor at the University of Georgia in 1943. In 1945 he moved to Berkeley where he taught genetics. Spencer and Marion S. Cave studied the interaction between

pollen Pollen is a powdery substance produced by most types of flowers of seed plants for the purpose of sexual reproduction. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced Gametophyte#Heterospory, microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm ...

and

ovule In seed plants, the ovule is the structure that gives rise to and contains the female reproductive cells. It consists of three parts: the ''integument'', forming its outer layer, the ''nucellus'' (or remnant of the sporangium, megasporangium), ...

of ''

Lilium ''Lilium'' ( ) is a genus of Herbaceous plant, herbaceous flowering plants growing from bulbs, all with large and often prominent flowers. Lilies are a group of flowering plants which are important in culture and literature in much of the world ...

'' together. Spencer conducted cytological and karyological studies on tomatoes, ''Drosophila'' and was especially interested in maternal effects. He visited numerous laboratories around the world and in 1956 visited Trinidad to examine the genetics of banana. An association with the entomologist Frederick D. Bennett made him shift his interests to insect evolution and examined male haploidy in insects. He identified the elimination of paternal genomes in male scale insects and noticed variations across several families and examined the evolution of these systems.

Personal life

At the age of 21 Brown married Roberta Schuknecht. After 18 years together the marriage ended in divorce.

Death

Brown was found dead at age 57 in his duplex apartment after failing to appear at a

commencement ceremony A graduation is the awarding of a diploma by an educational institution. It may also refer to the ceremony that is associated with it, which can also be called commencement, congregation, convocation or invocation. The date of the graduation ...

. He had been bound and gagged before being shot twice in the back. Three suspects were identified. One, Jeanette Iles, 27, pleaded guilty to participating in the robbery/murder, and was sentenced to a life sentence.

Awards

Brown received the 1956 Guggenheim Fellowship, one of 44 such awards the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

received that year.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Spencer Wharton 1977 deaths American geneticists People from Vermillion, South Dakota Scientists from South Dakota 20th-century American scientists University of Minnesota alumni University of California, Davis alumni UC Berkeley College of Chemistry faculty People murdered in 1977 1918 births People murdered in California American murder victims