Education
University of the Witwatersrand.
University of the Witwatersrand.
He was a pioneer in using bacteria to study fundamental biological phenomena — such as development, differentiation, and the turnover of macromolecules — which had more usually been investigated in higher organisms. He attended the University of the Witwatersrand, where he read for an honours Bachelor of Science degree. After graduating in 1942, he worked as a research assistant at the Medical school in Johannesburg.
Amongst others, he taught Sydney Brenner there.
He came to London in 1947 to work for a Doctor of Philosophy under John Yudkin at King’s College of Household and Social Science in London (which became Queen Elizabeth College in 1953). From 1966 until his retirement in 1987 he was Iveagh Professor of Chemical Microbiology at the University of Oxford, where he built up a highly successful research group studying spore formation in bacteria.
Royal Society.