| John Robert Stanley Fincham | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 11, 1926 |
| Died | February 9, 2005 (aged 78) |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge |
| Notable awards | Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh |
John Robert Stanley Fincham FRS FRSE (11 August 1926 – 9 February 2005)[1][2] was a noted British geneticist who made important contributions to biochemical genetics and microbial genetics[3]. Perhaps most notably, he obtained the first direct evidence for the "one gene-one enzyme" hypothesis. He accomplished this considerable feat using mutants of Neurospora crassa[4][5] deficient in a specific enzyme called glutamate dehydrogenase.
Fincham was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences. He did his PhD in the Botany School at Cambridge and then did a year's postgraduate research at the California Institute of Technology with Sterling Emerson (whose daughter Ann he married).[2]
Fincham was the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge between 1984 and 1991. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1978.