John Thoday facts for kids
John Marion Thoday was a very important British scientist who studied genetics. He was born on August 30, 1916, and passed away on August 25, 2008. His father, David Thoday, was also a scientist who studied plants. John Thoday became a professor at Cambridge University and was chosen to be a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a big honor for scientists.
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Early Life and Education
John Thoday was born in a place called Chinley in Derbyshire, England. He went to a school called Bootham School in York. After that, he studied at University College of North Wales in Bangor. He then continued his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Serving His Country
During World War II, John Thoday joined the Royal Air Force, also known as the RAF. He worked as a photographic intelligence officer. This means he helped analyze photos taken from planes to gather important information during the war.
Discoveries in Genetics
John Thoday started his research in 1947. He spent a lot of time studying how living things within the same species can be different from each other. This is called intraspecific genetic variation. He also looked at how these differences are passed down and how they change over time.
Understanding Genetic Differences
Thoday was very interested in how small differences in genes can lead to big changes in living things. He found new ways to locate specific genes on chromosomes. These are the parts of cells that carry genetic information. He showed that different genes can affect a trait in unique ways, which was a new idea at the time.
Experiments with Selection
One of his most famous experiments was about something called disruptive selection. Imagine you have a group of animals. Disruptive selection means you choose to breed only the animals with the most extreme traits, like the tallest and the shortest, but not the ones in the middle.
Thoday's experiments showed that this type of selection could be very powerful. It could make a group of animals much more varied. It could also create and keep different types of animals within the same group, which is called polymorphism.
A Step Towards New Species
He also found that if the selected animals were allowed to choose their own partners, the group could start to split into two separate parts. This is a big step towards forming new species. It means that over a very long time, these two groups might become so different that they can no longer breed with each other.
