John Fincham facts for kids

John Robert Stanley Fincham (born August 11, 1926 – died February 9, 2005) was an important British scientist. He was a geneticist, which means he studied how living things inherit traits. He made big discoveries about how genes work. He focused especially on tiny living things like fungi.

Early Life and Learning

John Fincham went to Peterhouse, Cambridge University. There, he studied Natural Sciences, which covers many different science subjects. He earned his PhD degree in Botany at Cambridge. After that, he spent a year doing research in the United States. He worked at the California Institute of Technology. While there, he met and married Ann Emerson.

Discoveries in Genetics

John Fincham's lab made exciting discoveries. They were among the first to show something called "intragenic complementation." This is a fancy way of saying that sometimes, two different mistakes in the same gene can actually fix each other. This creates a "pseudowild" (or almost normal) result.

He also found the first direct proof for the "one gene-one enzyme" idea. This idea says that each gene usually tells the body how to make one specific enzyme. Enzymes are special proteins that help chemical reactions happen in living things. Fincham used a type of mold called Neurospora crassa for his work. He studied molds that were missing a specific enzyme called glutamate dehydrogenase.

Career Highlights

John Fincham started his teaching career at the University of Leicester. He was a lecturer in botany from 1950 to 1954. Then he became a reader from 1954 to 1960. He also spent a year as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1961, he became the head of the Genetics Division at the John Innes Centre (JIC). This was a big step for the JIC. It showed they wanted to be leaders in biology, especially using tiny organisms. While at the John Innes Centre, he wrote an important book called Fungal Genetics (1963) with Peter Day. This book brought together all the known information about fungi genetics. It helped many scientists learn and grow in this field.

He stayed at the John Innes Centre until 1966. Then, he became a professor and head of a new Genetics Department at the University of Leeds. In 1976, John moved to Edinburgh. He became the Buchanan Chair of Genetics and led the Department of Genetics until 1984.

From 1984 to 1991, Fincham was the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. He was recognized for his important work. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969. This is a very high honor for scientists in the UK. He also became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1978. From 1978 to 1981, he was the president of The Genetics Society. In 1977, he received the Emil Christian Hansen Medal for his research on fungi.