Reeks AW/2/2 - Victor Chapman

Extent: 2 folders

Correspondence with agricultural research departments and universities around the world regarding seed exchange and lists of accession, the Watkins' collection, various research interests and collecting expeditions and correspondence with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Zealand.

Admin History: Victor Chapman joined the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge in 1936 as assistant to A E Watkins. After an interval of 5 years in the Royal Air Force during World War II he returned to the PBI under Dr G D H Bell to research plant breeding and variety production, especially interspecific and intergeneric crossing in Triticinae. The initial team consisted of Mary Gee, Leo Sachs and Victor Chapman, although only Chapman remained by the time Ralph Riley joined in 1952. Chapman collaborated with Riley on research and a number of publications including 'Genetic Control of the Cytologically Diploid Behaviour of Hexaploid Wheat', Nature, 182 (1958), 'The Inheritance in Wheat of Crossability with Rye', Genet. Res., Camb. (1967) and 'Cytological Determination of the Homœology of Chromosomes of Triticum aestivum', Nature, 203 (1968). Chapman retired from the Cytogenetics Department in 1980 (see PBI Annual Report 1980) and was especially remembered for his role in new research in wheat cytogenetics in the 1960s and his collaborations with Ralph Riley (Director 1971-1978). (For Ralph Riley see Annual Report 1978)