Francis Albert Eley Crew FRS FRSE (2 March 1886 – 26 May 1973) was an English animal geneticist. He was a pioneer in his field leading to the University of Edinburgh’s place as a world leader in the science of animal genetics. He was the first Director of the Institute of Animal Breeding and the first Professor of Animal Genetics. He is said to have laid the foundations of medical genetics. [1]
Francis Albert Eley Crew was born in Tipton in England on 2 March 1886 the only surviving son of Thomas Crew, a grocer. [2] He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and the High School in Birmingham. From an early age he took an interest in breeding bantam chickens, and won prizes at local shows. [3] He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, studying under Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire and Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer, and graduating MB ChB in 1912.
In the First World War he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, rising to the rank of Major. He was on active service with the 3rd Field Ambulance Service in France. Professor Alan William Greenwood ran the Institute during Crew’s wartime absence.
In 1920 Sharpey-Schafer approached him, asking him to run the newly created animal breeding research station in Edinburgh. This was originally housed at High School Yards, transferring to King's Buildings in 1924, there linking to the Chemistry Department. His staff at the Institute was illustrious: including John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Lancelot Hogben, Julian Huxley, Bertold Paul Wiesner and (as a postgraduate) Honor Fell. At this time the UK’s first Pregnancy Diagnosis Laboratory was also set up under Crew as a tangential area of public benefit, linked to their research. In the 1930s its staff was increased by scientists from Germany and Italy including Hermann Joseph Muller, Charlotte Auerbach and Guido Pontecorvo. [3]
In 1921 he received a doctorate (DSc) on his work on sex-determination in frogs. [4] He received an MD [5] the same year and a PhD in 1923 on the achondroplasia-like condition met with in cattle, specifically the Dexter cattle breed. [6] In 1928 he was created the first Professor of Animal Genetics at the University of Edinburgh, a chair indirectly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
In 1922, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were James Cossar Ewart, Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer, James Hartley Ashworth and Sir Robert Blyth Greig. [7] In 1929 Frederick Hutt travelled from Canada and sought Crew out to specifically study genetics under him, and later was to fill his role in the world of animal genetics. [8] He served as the Society’s Secretary from 1931 to 1936 and as Vice-President from 1936 to 1939. He won the Society's Keith Medal for the period 1937-39. In 1939 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
During the Second World War he established the Polish School of Medicine in Edinburgh, which survived until 1949 and had a total of 228 graduates. In 1940, he was commanding officer of the Military Hospital at Edinburgh Castle, and a member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. [9] He saw that the Polish forces included medical professors, lecturers and students and conceived the idea of these students being taught by their own teachers in Polish. [9] He proposed establishing a Polish Medical Faculty in the University of Edinburgh, supported by the dean of the medical faculty, Professor Sydney Smith. The move was approved by the University Senate with the backing of the Principal, Sir Thomas Holland. [9] The University signed an agreement with the Polish Government in Exile in London, headed by General Wladyslaw Sikorski, on 24 February 1941, to create the Polish School of Medicine. [9] Crew was one of eight Scottish professors in the school, working alongside ten Polish professors. [9] On 28 May 1943, the President of the Polish Republic, Władysław Raczkiewicz, created Crew a Commander of the Order "Polonia Restituta" alongside Professor Sydney Smith and Sir Thomas Holland, at a ceremony in the University's McEwan Hall.
On 4 June 1946, Crew attended a special graduation ceremony at the University of Edinburgh marking the 5th anniversary of the Polish School of Medicine's foundation. [10] Professor John Crofton, dean of the medical faculty, said in the opening address: "[...] to bring about the Polish School of Medicine [...] required a substantial pinch of imagination as a catalyst. This un-British ingredient was provided by Professor Frank Crew [...], but of course in respect of imagination Professor Crew is at least a couple of standard deviations from the British mean. [10] "
During the war Crew was also Director of Medical Research for the War Office, with the rank of Brigadier. [3]
In 1944 he succeeded Percy Samuel Lelean in the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health at the University of Edinburgh. [11] In 1955 he moved to Ain Shams University in Cairo as Professor of Social and Preventative Medicine. In 1957-8 he worked for the World Health Organization as a visiting professor at the University of Rangoon. [12]
In 1958 the University of Edinburgh awarded him a Doctor of Letters (LLD).
He died on 26 May 1973.
He married Helen Campbell Dykes, a fellow medical student, in 1912. She died in 1971 and he remarried the following year to Margaret Ogilvie Withof-Keus, who had previously served under him in the RAMC.
His portrait, painted by Alfred Edward Borthwick, forms part of the Edinburgh University Art Collection. [3] The National Portrait Gallery hold a bromide print of Crew taken by Walter Stoneman in 1945.
The Crew Building on Alexander Crum Brown Road at Kings Buildings is named after him.
Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer FRS FRSE FRCP was a British physiologist.
Lancelot Thomas Hogben FRS FRSE was a British experimental zoologist and medical statistician. He developed the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) as a model organism for biological research in his early career, attacked the eugenics movement in the middle of his career, and wrote popular books on science, mathematics and language in his later career.
Percy Theodore Herring FRSE FRCPE LLD was a physician and physiologist, notable for first describing Herring bodies in the posterior pituitary gland.
John Michael 'Rab' Rabinovich FRSE FRCS FRCSE LLD was a geneticist who co-founded the science of mutagenesis by mutations in fruit flies exposed to mustard gas. He was Professor at Guy's Hospital Medical School.
Prof Thomas Swale Vincent MD FRSE LLD was a British physiologist who spent most of his working life in Canada.
Ivan de Burgh Daly was a British experimental physiologist and animal physiologist who had a specialist knowledge of ECG use and was awarded a Beit Fellowship in this field in 1920. Together with Shellshear, he was the first in England to use thermionic valves in any biological context. In 1948, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Babraham Institute at the University of Cambridge. He was a leading authority on pulmonary and bronchial systems.
Prof Henry Dryerre FRSE MRCS LRCP was a Scottish veterinarian and animal physiologist. He was Emeritus Professor of Physiology at the Dick Veterinary College in Edinburgh. The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland administer a bursary known as the Henry Dryerre Scholarship which is named in his honour. Due to his lineage he is sometimes referred to as Henry Dryerre IV.
Charles McNeil FRCPE FRCP RSE was a physician specialising in paediatrics, in particular neonatal paediatrics. He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London and Edinburgh, and was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1940-1943.
Prof Frederick Bruce Hutt HFRSE was a Canadian zoologist and geneticist in the 20th century. His book Animal Genetics has 31 published editions from 1964 to 1981 and is translated into six languages.
Artur Jurand FRSE was a Polish-born animal geneticist who did important work at the University of Edinburgh in the later 20th century. He anglicised his name to Arthur Jurand once settled in Scotland.
The Polish School of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh was established in March 1941. Initially, the idea was to meet the needs of the Polish Armed Forces for doctors but from the outstart, civilian students were admitted. Founded on the basis of an agreement between the Polish Government in Exile and the Senate of The University of Edinburgh this unique wartime initiative enabled students to complete their medical degrees.
Pius Charles Koller FRSE, known as Peo Charles Koller, was a Hungarian-born cytologist and cytogeneticist.
Colonel Percy Samuel Lelean was a Canadian-born surgeon who specialised in issues of Public Health. He served with distinction in the First World War.
William Christopher Miller FRSE was a 20th century British veterinary surgeon and author. He was President of the National Veterinary Association in 1940.
Sanford Sterling Munro FRSE FSA was a 20th-century Canadian zoologist and geneticist.
Prof James Edward Nichols FRSE was a Welsh geneticist.
Sutherland Simpson FRSE was a Scottish physician who emigrated to the United States to become Professor of Physiology at Cornell University.
Helen Slizynska (1908-1977) was a geneticist at the University of Edinburgh who conducted important work on the fruit fly Drosophila.
John Tait was a 20th-century Scottish physician, physiologist and medical author. He was emeritus Professor of Medicine at McGill University in Canada.
Barnet Woolf FRSE was a 20th-century British scientist, whose disciplines had a broad scope. He made lasting contributions to biochemistry, genetics, epidemiology, nutrition, public health, statistics, and computer science. His name appears in the Hanes-Woolf plot: a mathematical plotting of chemical reaction times.
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