Item MJA/2/2/2 - Ronald Alfred Silow

Extent: 2 pages

Deposited in the John Innes Archives, 1995. Catalogued by Rosemary Harvey, John Innes Archivist. Later revisions by MJA. Collection now at the National Archives

Letter from Dr N M Clarke (Silow's nephew) to the JIC Archivist Rosemary Harvey about the proposed deposit of the papers of plant geneticist Ronald Alfred Silow.

Admin History: Ronald Alfred Silow, 1908-1990. Ronald Alfred Silow was born on February 21st 1908. He was educated at the Latymer School in London. He gained First Class Honours in Agricultural Botany at Reading and then went on to do his MSc at Wales, returning to Reading to gain his DSc in Genetics. He was Geneticist at the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation's Cotton Research Station, in Trinidad in the West Indies and was Visiting Professor in Plant Genetics at Virginia University in USA. He was also Agricultural Research Council Officer at Cambridge University and Director of Science for the British Council in China. He later worked as Technical Officer of the Plant Industry Branch of the Agricultural Division of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations in Rome. From 1955 to 1963 Dr Silow was Chief of the Atomic Energy Branch, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. Here he initiated and developed activities on the uses of atomic energy in food and agriculture. In 1964 R.A. Silow was appointed first Deputy Director of the Joint Division for Atomic Energy in Agriculture, established by the International Atomic Agency and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Dr. Silow also campaigned for more effective international control against chemical and biological warfare. In October 1975 Dr.Silow stated that he had repeatedly warned the FAO Administration that Dr.M.S.Swaminathan, a leading adviser to FAO and the U.N. System in Food Science and Agricultural Development, was presenting to the UN System data and claims widely known to be false leading to the wastage of much manpower and money intended by member governments for economic development. Dr.Silow also claimed that though it was said within the FAO that Swaminathan had cleared himself, recent evidence showed that Swaminathan's misleading of his Government and the FAO culminated in the falsity of his defence in August 1973 against the criticisms levelled against him by the Official Committee in India that enquired into the suicide in May 1972 of Dr.Vinod H.Shah, one of Swaminathan's scientific staff, in protest against the irregularities in science at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi where Swaminathan was Director. Swaminathan had claimed that he had bred a new variety of wheat with 15©25% more protein and 148% more lysine in that increased protein than in its parental variety. After the death of his wife from breast cancer in 1988, Dr.Silow launched the Bertha St.Aubyn Silow Foundation to raise cash for breast cancer research. Ronald Silow died on July 2nd. 1990, at the age of 82. He left his entire estate of 300,000 to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund to help pay for tests into a drug which could prevent breast cancer: Tamoxifen. His special areas of activity were: Genetics, particularly of cotton and pasture plants, and species crosses; speciation, evolution and domestication of crop plants; crop breeding particularly cotton; international scientific relations; organisation of agricultural research and scientific education and research in Europe, North and South America, Australasia and the Far East.