Malcolm Ferguson-Smith
Malcolm Andrew Ferguson-Smith, FRS FRSE (born 5 September 1931) is a British geneticist.[1]
Early life
Ferguson-Smith was born in Glasgow in 1931, the son of physician John Ferguson-Smith and graduated from Glasgow University in 1955 with a degree in Medicine. In 1955-1956 he was House Physician and House Surgeon at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow and in 1956-1958 Senior House Officer and Registrar in Pathology.
Johns Hopkins career
In 1959 he accepted a post as Fellow in Medicine at the School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore where he worked on chromosome analysis for nearly three years, establishing the first human chromosome diagnostic laboratory in the USA.[2]
Return to Glasgow
In 1961 he returned to the Department of Genetics at Glasgow University and was appointed successively Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader, becoming the first Burton Professor of Medical Genetics in 1973. Apart from teaching genetics to medical students his duties involved the establishment of a Regional Genetics Service for the West of Scotland. This provided opportunities for contributing to the human gene map using familial chromosome polymorphisms, deletion mapping, in situ hybridization and chromosome sorting by flow cytometry. His work on mapping the Y-linked sex determinant in XX males led to the isolation of the mammalian sex-determining gene twenty-five years later.[3]
Gene mapping
In 1987 he was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Pathology at Cambridge University and Director of the East Anglia Regional Genetics Service, where he furthered his research on gene mapping. He retired as Head of Pathology in 1998 and moved to the Cambridge University Department of Veterinary Medicine. In 2002 he established the Cambridge Resource Centre for Comparative Genomics which produced and distributed chromosome-specific DNA from over 120 species of animals, birds and fish to scientists worldwide for research in biology, evolution and gene mapping. This data allowed comparisons between species to be made and mapped, illuminating the relationships between species and allowing research into genomic evolution.[4]
Other achievements
In 1998 he was appointed as the scientist member of Lord Phillips’ Committee to review the UK Government’s original Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Inquiry and consider the emergence of BSE and new variant CJD and the actions taken, reporting in 2000.[5]
He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1978 and the Royal Society of London in 1983.[6][7] His papers are held at University of Glasgow.[8]
Publications
- Early Prenatal Diagnosis (1983)
- Prenatal Diagnosis & Screening (1992)
- Essential Medical Genetics (5 edn, 1997)
Further reading
Professor Malcolm-Ferguson Smith's contribution to an oral history of Clinical Molecular Genetics in the UK c.1975-c.2000[9] is freely available as a PDF download from The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group.
References
- ↑ Debrett Biography
- ↑ Tim Powell. "Ferguson-Smith, Malcolm Andrew, b.1931. Geneticist.". Bath.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2009-10-28. Retrieved 2010-06-26.
- ↑ Tim Powell. "Ferguson-Smith, Malcolm Andrew, b.1931. Geneticist.". Bath.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2009-10-28. Retrieved 2010-06-26.
- ↑ Tim Powell. "Ferguson-Smith, Malcolm Andrew, b.1931. Geneticist.". Bath.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2009-10-28. Retrieved 2010-06-26.
- ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20010203064300/bseinquiry.gov.uk/
- ↑ http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/fellowship/fellows.pdf
- ↑ "Fellows - The Fellowship". The Royal Society. Retrieved 2010-06-26.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20091028154212/http://www.bath.ac.uk/ncuacs/guidef.htm#FergusonSmith
- ↑ Jones E M and Tansey E M, eds. (2014). Clinical Molecular Genetics in the UK c.1975-c.2000 (Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine, vol. 48 ed.). UK: Queen Mary, University of London.