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William Broadhurst Brierley

William Broadhurst Brierley (1889–1963) was an English mycologist. He is known particularly for his work on "grey mould".

Life

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Brierley had a deprived background, and was brought up in a poor district of Manchester. At 14 he became a pupil-teacher in his elementary school. He went into teacher training at Victoria University of Manchester, and then moved to the botany course.[1] There he studied under Frederick Ernest Weiss at[2] At this period he taught evening classes to support himself. With an honours degree of 1911 in botany, he went on at Manchester to complete an M.Sc.[1] He married in July 1914: he knew Susan Fairhurst through the undergraduate Sociological Society. They lived in Levenshulme.[3] He was then an assistant lecturer in economic botany and demonstrator at Manchester.[4]

During World War I, Brierley took up in 1915 a post as assistant in plant pathology at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the couple moved to Richmond, London.[3] He then served in the Artists' Rifles, being invalided out in 1916. He returned to a post at Kew, studying fungal disease in vegetables.[5][6] In 1918 he moved, and founded a mycology department at Rothamsted Experimental Station.[7]

In 1934 Brierley became professor of agricultural botany at the University of Reading, as successor to John Percival.[5][8] He retired in 1954. In later life, he and his second wife Marjorie Brierley resided in the Newlands Valley.[5][9]

Works

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In 1916 Brierley showed that shab, a disease of lavender plants, was fungal, caused by a fungus that attacked parts of the plant above ground. The disease was further investigated by Charles Russell Metcalfe (1904–1991).[10] His work in 1918 clarified the life cycle of Botrytis cinerea, the "grey mould" fungus.[11] In the 1920s, he with colleagues made standard a dilution plate technique for studying soil fungi.[12]

For 25 years, Brierley edited the Annals of Applied Biology.[5] He translated the Pflanzliche Infektionslehre (1946) of Ernst Albert Gäumann as Principles of Plant Infection (1950).[13]

Family

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Brierley married, firstly, in 1914 Susan Sutherland Fairhurst. They were divorced, after a separation that began around 1918; and in 1922 she married Nathan Isaacs.[14][15] Brierley's second wife was Marjorie Brierley.[16]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b Graham, Philip Jeremy (2009). Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children. Karnac. p. 57. ISBN 978-1-85575-691-5.
  2. ^ H. Hamshaw Thomas, Frederick Ernest Weiss. 1865-1953, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 8, No. 22 (Nov., 1953), pp. 601–608, at p. 603. Published by: Royal Society. JSTOR 769232
  3. ^ a b Graham, Philip Jeremy (2009). Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children. Karnac. p. 58. ISBN 978-1-85575-691-5.
  4. ^ Manchester, University of (1914). Calendar. p. 68.
  5. ^ a b c d Webster, John; Moore, David (1996). Brief Biographies of British Mycologists (PDF). British Mycological Society. pp. 24–25. ISBN 978-0-9527704-0-4.
  6. ^ Graham, Philip Jeremy (2009). Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children. Karnac. p. 60. ISBN 978-1-85575-691-5.
  7. ^ Russell, Sir Edward John (1966). A History of Agricultural Science in Great Britain, 1620-1954. Allen & Unwin. p. 320.
  8. ^ London, Linnean Society of (2001). The Linnean: Newsletter and Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. The Society. p. 11.
  9. ^ "Women Psychoanalysts in Great Britain, Marjorie Brierley". www.psychoanalytikerinnen.de.
  10. ^ Upson, Tim; Andrews, Susyn (2004). The Genus Lavandula. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. p. 61.
  11. ^ Journal of Agricultural Research. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1926. p. 613.
  12. ^ Ainsworth, G. C. (1976). Introduction to the History of Mycology. Cambridge University Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-521-21013-3.
  13. ^ Bentley Glass, Reviewed Work: Principles of Plant Infection. A Text-Book of General Plant Pathology for Biologists, Agriculturists, Foresters and Plant Breeders. by Ernst Gaumann, The Quarterly Review of Biology Vol. 26, No. 3 (Sep., 1951), p. 297. Published by: The University of Chicago Press JSTOR 2809911
  14. ^ Haines, Catharine M. C.; Stevens, Helen M. (2001). International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950. ABC-CLIO. p. 145. ISBN 978-1-57607-090-1.
  15. ^ Graham, Philip Jeremy (2009). Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children. Karnac. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-85575-691-5.
  16. ^ Graham, Philip Jeremy (2009). Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children. Karnac. p. 289. ISBN 978-1-85575-691-5.
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