Frank Engledow

Frank Leonard Engledow CMG FRS (20 August 1890 – 3 July 1985) was an agricultural botanist who did his research at the Plant Breeding Institute at the University of Cambridge Farm from 1919 onwards. He was a fellow of St John's College (1919-1985), Cambridge, and held the positions of University Lecturer in Agriculture (1926-1930) and Drapers Professor of Agriculture (1930-1957) at Cambridge, where he directed the School of Agriculture from 1930 to 1957. Engledow advised the British government on agricultural production in the (former) colonies as well as in the homeland from 1927 to 1962.[1][2][3] He kept publishing on agricultural practices and teaching after his retirement.[1]

Education

Engledow was born in Deptford, Kent as the fifth and last child from Henry Engledow, police sergeant and, after his retirement, agent of Bexleyheath Brewery and Elizabeth Prentice. Frank attended from the age of five the Upland Council school, Bexleyheath. He proceeded from 1905 until 1909 in Dartford Grammar School. From there he went to University College London to study pure and applied mathematics and physics on a one-year scholarship. He won College Prizes in these subjects and obtained a year later a B.Sc. externally. On advice of one of his teachers, E. Cunningham, he applied for and was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge. He was more interested in the application of mathematics than in the theory which was the subject of the Tripos lectures he was supposed to attend. So he tried to change to subjects in botany, zoology and geology which he had found out to be of more interest from contacts with his fellow undergraduates. Fortunately he was permitted to do so; with hindsight to his career the trust in his instinct proved to be right.

Although he started with a backlog in knowledge his determination and hard work resulted in a First in Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1912, the award of a Slater Studentship of the College and, later, a Research Scholarship of the Ministry of Agriculture.

He had been accepted as assistant by R.H. Biffen,[4] who had been appointed in 1908 as the first Professor of Agricultural Botany. Biffen became the first Director of the newly founded Plant Breeding Institute in 1912. A programme of research combining genetics with quantitative methods and statistics was launched resulting in three papers of Engledow in 1914. One of these was co-authored by G. Udny Yule (then Lecturer in Statistics in Cambridge), who became very interested in the statistics to be used in agricultural botany. Engledow became a Fellow of St John's, submitting his thesis based on his experimental work to be refereed by Professor William Bateson in 1919.

World War I

Engledow enlisted in The Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment shortly before hostilities broke out. From 1915 to 1919 the Regiment served in India, and Mesopotamia, fighting Turks and Germans. Engledow, starting as Captain rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. During the displacements of the troops he started to make notes on the agricultural practices he saw. He was stationed in Jhanai where he was also in hospital with typhoid. After that he was stationed in Rawalpindi at Headquarters of the regiment.[5] Late in 1917 they sailed to Mesopotamia where he served a number of months as assistant to the Director of Agriculture of Mesopotamia, Geoffrey Evans. He was decorated with a Croix de Guerre in 1918. He returned on request of Professor Biffen to the School of Agriculture and the Plant Breeding Institute in 1919, and resumed his research.

The Plant Breeding Institute

The Institute was a rather modest facility and working space at the university did not fully compensate for this. Most of the work had to be completed by hand. Nevertheless, fruitful research was done on breeding wheat and barley. Biffen’s discovery that relevant characteristics, such as resistance against disease and grain quality, were inheritable was the basis on which Engledow, by introducing quantitative analysis and statistics, succeeded in improving these crops. Seven consecutive papers on wheat were published between 1923 and 1930 in the Journal of Agricultural Science of Cambridge. With G. Udney Yule he published a seminal paper on yield trials in 1926. These papers were innovative with regard to breeding of cereals and other commodities, linking the roles of geneticists, plant breeders and field experimentalists. Engledow and various co-workers reported on quantified growth characteristics of individual plants related to quantitative indicators of yield. Meticulous parametrization permitted studying the effects of plant spacing on growth and per acre yield. Engledows breeding activities resulted in varieties of wheat by selection (Rampton Rivet cultivated 1939-’57, Squareheads Master 13/4, 1940-’60), and by hybridization (Holdfast, 1936-’58 and Steadfast, 1941-’53). In 1921 he married Mildred Emmeline Roper a graduate student in Botany from Cape Town, South Africa. She ended her academic pursuits in becoming his wife and expert adviser on a daily basis. In 1924 he and his wife made a tour through Canada and the USA for seven weeks, visiting various agricultural areas and a scientific meeting. They aimed at becoming better acquainted with the agricultural practices of that continent.[6]

Drapers Professorship

Before Engledow was appointed to the Drapers chair of Agriculture in 1930, he had been Lecturer in Agriculture from 1926. As he became Professor the School of Agriculture was extended. The Plant Breeding Institute was enlarged from 250 to 450 acres. More research laboratories were installed and advisory services were begun. Engledow was active in developing and planning further changes in the School and its curriculum which reflected the changing role of agricultural science from an orientation to amelioration of production of food and commodities in the homeland and the colonies to helping to solve food problems worldwide. His lifelong publishing activity testifies to this. During World War II other services to the country were foremost important: he was serving in the Home Guard and the Ministry of Agriculture in keeping up the regional food production. He was also a member of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) of England and Wales and the Agricultural Improvement Council (AIC). These activities culminated in him attending the United Nations conference on Food and Agriculture in 1943 in Hot Springs, VA, USA as a deputy of the Ministry. Back home a policy Memorandum was written for England and Wales. He based this on a recommendation of the UN Conference. The report was approved by ARC and AIC and was to serve as foundation for agricultural policy in the UK. He became a Knight Bachelor in 1944. In 1943 he was appointed as a Managing Trustee of the newly established Nuffield Foundation.[7] He retired from this task in 1966. He was, as Chairman of a special committee responsible for the study and the publication of “Principles for British Agricultural Policy” that had been initiated in 1945 and was completed in the late fifties.[8] His plans for the School, formulated in 1939, were to be put in practice after the war when both the research institutes and the advisory service were taken up in nationwide organizations. Well aware of the changing expectations in the post-war world of the role of agricultural science and of the alumni of the School, he was concerned with the balance between specialisation and breadth, as his papers of 1968 and 1970 show. Direct contact with farming practices and their consequences for the environment in the long-term were the responsibility of his graduates, he maintained.

Traveling and advising

Engledow undertook a long series of overseas travels with the aim of advising either local parties or governmental bodies or part of the British government:[2][9]

1927 on invitation to the Gold Coast, Ghana and especially Nigeria for the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, 9 wks.[10] Report on cotton growing and seed supply in Nigeria (with C.N.French).
1929 to Trinidad, to inspect the Cotton Research Institute and to report on the teaching and research of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture on behalf of the Empire Marketing Board, 9 wks.[10] (confidential report).
1933 Chairman of a Commission of Inquiry in the affairs of the Rubber Research Institute, Malaya (Kuala Lumpur) at the request of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 14 wks.;[11] report to the Ministry.
1935-36 Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on the Scientific Development of the Indian Tea Association on behalf of that Organisation. They made a tour of 4 months (long distance by ship) to tea growing areas in Ceylon, North India (Assam), Central India (briefly) and (by plane) Java and Sumatra (Dutch colony).[2][11] Report to the Indian Tea Association.
1938-39 Member of the Royal Commission on the West Indies (‘Moyne Commission’), which toured on the Yacht of Lord Moyne from New York all the British West Indian Colonies and back to New York in 4.5 months in order to report on the social and economic conditions of the West Indies. The report was handed over to the Government that acted upon it, although the report only was published after the war. On some matters it was then decided that the report merited updating with a view to eventual decolonisation:
1945 Report on Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry and Veterinary Matters, by F.L. Engledow Esq. C.M.G., Supplement to the Report of the West India Royal Commission;[10] The report of the Commission is to be commanded at H.M.S.O. as #6608.
1946 Delegate, with H.A Temperley and J.W. Monroe of a Committee to the Colonial Office to select a site for an Agricultural Research Institute to implement Agricultural, Animal Health and Forestry Research in Kenia, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar. After two months on the way back Engledow visited Sudan. Report:[12] Agriculture in the Colonies. 1. Agricultural issues facing Colonial peoples. 2. Agricultural Betterment in East Africa. Colonial Office.
1948 During a travel of 5 months, he visited with his wife Rhodesia (with a short excursion to South Africa) on a request of the Southern Rhodesian Government to report on Policy on Agricultural Development, and for research, education and advisory work connected to such a policy;[13] Reports: Agricultural Production in the early future: second interim report of Southern Rhodesia Development Co-ordinating Commission. Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia Government Stationery Office; Report on agricultural teaching, research and advisory work. Salisbury S. Rhodesia Government Stationery Office; Report to the Minister of Agriculture and Lands on the agricultural development of Southern Rhodesia, Salisbury, Government Stationery Office, 1950.[14]
1952-53 Sir Frank and his wife travelled for seven weeks (mostly by plane) in Africa as a member of an advisory committee of the Colonial Office and for the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation. They visited Sudan, Kenia, Uganda, Tangayika and Zanzibar. They visited also Khartoum to meet Joseph Hutchinson, who became later his successor.[15][2]
1953-54 A four wks. journey to Assam as Chairman of a Commission of the Indian Tea Association.[16] Report on tea growing problems and current research to the Indian Tea Association.[1]
1954-55 Visit of 7.5 wks of Trinidad (Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, of the Board of which he was first a member for several years and, later, Chairman), Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica were also visited (by ship).[10]
1956-57 A 4.5 wks journey to Kenia and Uganda on request of the Governing Body of the East African Tea Research Institute in Kericho, Kenia. Report: on the Tea Research Institute of East Africa.[1]
1957 On request of the Federal Government of Nyasaland and Rhodesia, Sir Frank travelled for 4.5 months (by ship from and to the UK) to report on Agricultural Policy and Development. He was present at the 7th Degree Day of Gwebi College of Agriculture which was founded after the advice of the Miles Thomas Development Commission of Southern Rhodesia of which he was Vice-Chairman in 1948.[14]
1959 Invited to give Foundation Oration of Kumasi College of Technology (Ghana) and for lecturing (6 wks.) and to Nigeria at request of Nigerian Government to report on a Federal Scheme of Agricultural Research (4 wks.).[12]
1959-60 A one-month tour to Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenia visiting agricultural organisations.[12]
1961 On behalf of Rubber Research Institute of Malaya as a member of the Co-ordinating Advisory Committee on Rubber to that country and on the way out to Assam for tea growing research (7 wks.).[11]
1962 Again 6 wks. to Malaya, presumably in consequence of the tour of 1961.[11]

Personal life

Engledow married in 1921 Mildred Emmeline Roper (Cape Town, 1896–1956, Cambridge). She was very active in his professional life as a daily adviser and traveling companion. They had four daughters, Margareth Elizabeth (1922–1974), Catherine Mary (1924–1984), Ruth Mildred (1928) and Audrey Rachel (1933–2002). They lived from 1931 onwards on Huntingdon Road next to Howe Farm, a part of Cambridge University Farm (which also included the Plant Breeding Institute) in a newly build house called Hadleigh.

Honours

1918 Croix de Guerre
1935 Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George
1944 Knight Bachelor
1946 Fellowship of the Royal Society
1948-49 Member of Council of the Royal Society
1957 Emeritus Professor of Agriculture of Cambridge

Selected papers

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 G.D.H. Bell, Frank Leonard Engledow. 20 August 1890 – 3 July 1985; Biogr. Mems. Fell. R. Soc. 1986 32, 188–219, published 1 December 1986
  2. 1 2 3 4 Jöns, Heike (2016). "The University of Cambridge, academic expertise and the British Empire, 1885-1962". Environment and Planning A 48: 94-114. doi:10.1177/0308518X15594802.
  3. ↑ Perkins, J.H. (1997). Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  4. ↑ F. L. Engledow, ‘Rowland Harry Biffen, 1874–1949', Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 7 (1950): 9-25.
  5. ↑ St. Johns College, Papers of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, notebook, box 3
  6. ↑ Report on a tour in North America, St. Johns College, Papers of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, notebook, box 3 and box 4.
  7. ↑ The Nuffield Foundation Triennial Report (1983-5), The Nuffield Foundation, London, 1986.
  8. ↑ H.T. Williams (ed). Principles for British Agricultural Policy.Published for the Nuffield Foundation by Oxford University Press, Oxford 1960
  9. ↑ J M. Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism. Athens, Ohio University Press 2007.
  10. 1 2 3 4 St. Johns College, Papers of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, notebook, box 1
  11. 1 2 3 4 St. Johns College, Papers of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, notebook, box 3
  12. 1 2 3 St. Johns College, Papers of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, notebook, box 2
  13. ↑ St. Johns College Papers of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, notebook, box 2, report, box 4
  14. 1 2 St. Johns College Papers of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, report, box 4
  15. ↑ St. Johns College, Papers of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, notes, box 2
  16. ↑ A complete listing of the Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society on web site of the Royal Society
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