Collection SD - Sydney Dickinson Collection

Extent: 2 boxes

Unknown deposit

Sydney Dickinson's plant pathology offprints, including copies presented to and/or signed by Rowland H Biffen (1874-1949). Many signed 'with compliments of the author'.

Admin History: Sydney Dickinson (1898 - ) was a Plant Pathologist specializing in cereal rust fungi. He worked briefly at the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station in the 1930s and at the Cambridge University School of Agriculture in the 1940s and 50s (?) where he pioneered the study of cereal rust fungi on artificial membranes (rust physiology), continuing to publish articles well into the 1970s. He manufactured membranes from nitrocellulose and other materials, using them to demonstrate that membrane surfaces stimulated formation of infection structures by germinating spores. This enabled the observation of developmental phenomena such as zigzag growth of germ tubes and differentiation of structures resembling appressoria, substomatal vesicles, infection hyphae, and haustoria, implicating the effect of leaf surfaces on fungal differentiation. He demonstrated that infection structures must be produced before leaf-colonizing hyphae can grow, a finding instrumental in the culture of Puccinia graminis on artificial media.