Collection DL - Dan Lewis collection

Extent: 1 folder

Includes photographs, correspondence, newsclippings and publications

Admin History: Dan Lewis was born at Basford, Stoke-on-Trent, the son of Ernest and Edith Lewis, on 30 Dec 1910. One of four children, Dan’s elder sister, Dora, was an accomplished musician, his younger brother, Clifford, had a twin who died early in childhood. The family lived at Basford Villa, a substantial family house with a fine garden. Dan attended Newcastle-under-Lyme High school from 1919 to 1929 and had a keen interest in electricity and physics. During a family holiday in the West Country Dan's brother contracted scarlet fever. Dan was not allowed home because he would have been quarantined and unable to go back to school so was sent to stay with a Mr Wooding, a pottery designer, enthusiastic gardener and charismatic teacher who lived in the same village. Over a period of six weeks Dan was introduced to horticulture and his allegiance switched from physics to plants. On leaving school Dan spent a period of 2½ years at the nurseries of R. G. James near Crewe, at Treseder’s (then in Truro), and finally at the Hillier nurseries. He took a correspondence course in biology offered by Wolsey Hall in Oxford to get the necessary qualifications and then chose to go to the University of Reading to complete his degree because of its strong focus on horticulture and agriculture. He married Mary Phoebe Eleanor Burry in Dec 1933. On graduation he was awarded a research scholarship by the University and began some research on the absorption of solutes by leaves. In 1934 he became Assistant Pomologist to Morley Crane at the John Innes Horticultural Institution, then in Merton Park. in the early years his research covered the basic genetics of apples and pears as well as raspberries. He went on to study the physiological effects of temperature on self-incompatibility in various plants grown at the JI. Working with Crane and other associates he elucidated the genetically controlled incompatibility mechanism in plants and its practical application to economic crops, especially fruit. In 1957 Lewis left John Innes and became the first geneticist to be appointed Head of one of the University of London’s several botany departments. In 1965 he went to Delhi on a Royal Society Leverhulme Visiting Professorship and in 1970 he spent three months at the University of Singapore