Howard Dalton

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Sir Howard Dalton FRS (February 8, 1944 – January 12, 2008), was a British microbiologist.

He was the Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) from March 2002 to September 2007.

Dalton graduated from Queen Elizabeth College, University of London (now part of King's College London) in 1965, and went on to study at the University of Sussex with Prof. John Postgate, obtaining his doctorate in 1968. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University and the University of Sussex before joining the University of Warwick in 1973 as a lecturer in Biological Sciences. He became a Professor in 1983. Dalton's main fields of interest concerned the physiology, genetics and biochemistry of organisms exhibiting methanotrophy.

He served as Chair of Biological Sciences at Warwick from 1999 to 2002 before being appointed to DEFRA. He returned full-time to the University in October 2007^[1], and continued working there until his death.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1993, was President of the Society for General Microbiology from 1997 to 2000, and was awarded the Leeuwenhoek medal lecture of the Royal Society in 2000. He was named a Knight Bachelor in the 2007 New Years Honours list [1]. He died suddenly in Royal Leamington Spa on January 12 2008.^[2]