Tributes to Durham academic

11:51am Sunday 29th June 2008

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TRIBUTES have been paid to a pioneer in plant and crops research who worked at Durham University.

Dr Jack Lionel Crosby was a stationmaster's son, and went on to work at the Plant Breeding Institute at Cambridge University and later was Reader in Genetics at Durham University.

Dr Crosby died last week, aged 91. He leaves a widow, June, son Matthew, two daughters, Victoria and Alison, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Mrs Crosby, who met her husband when she was a history undergraduate, is a leading member of the Weardale Society.

Dr Crosby, who had been in ill health for several years, was born the only son of Matthew South Crosby, a country stationmaster and JP at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.

He went to Cambridge University, where he won a double first in natural sciences and chemistry. He was later awarded a PhD.

His early pioneering work, researching crops and grains, earned him a Smart Fellowship.

He left Cambridge during the Second World War to work as a chemist at explosives manufacturing plants, mainly in Glasgow, before lecturing at Imperial College, London.

It was in the autumn of 1946 that Dr Crosby came to Durham.

"My father recalled that it was a bitterly cold day and he went skating on the River Wear," said his son, Matthew.

Dr Crosby did much of his important plants research work in the botany department at Durham, retiring in 1981.

Both he had his wife, June, had made frequent visits to Teesdale and Weardale, where they finally made their home.

"Much of my father's success as an academic could be attributed to him being a brilliant scientific analyst," said his son, Matthew.

Dr Crosby's funeral service was at St Thomas's Church, Stanhope, on Wednesday.

John Richards, retired emeritus professor of botany at Newcastle University, was one of Dr Crosby's students at Durham University from 1961 to 1964.

He said: "His lectures in genetics were unprepared and simply brilliant. He would shamble into the lecture hall, in sandals and open-neck shirt, and simply go without a single note, word-perfect, fascinating and completely clear on the most complex of matters.

"They were as good as any lectures I have heard in half a century in university life. Almost single-handedly, he converted me to my studies in evolutionary and population genetics."