Francis Albert Eley Crew

Prof Francis Albert Eley Crew FRS FRSE LLD (1886-1973) was a British animal geneticist. He was a pioneer in his field leading to Edinburgh’s place as a world leader in the science of animal genetics. He was the first Director of the Institute of Animal Breeding and the first Professor of Animal Genetics. He is said to have laid the foundations of medical genetics.

Life

He was born in Tipton in England on 2 March 1886 the only surviving son of Thomas Crew, a grocer. He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and the High School in Birmingham. From an early age he took an interest in breeding bantam chickens, and won prizes at local shows. He won a place studying Medicine at Edinburgh University, studying under Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire and Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer, and graduating MB ChB in 1912.

In the First World War he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, rising to the rank of Major. He was on active service with the 3rd Field Ambulance Service in France. Prof Alan William Greenwood ran the Institute during Crew’s wartime absence.

In 1920 Sharpey-Schafer approached him, asking him to run the newly created animal breeding research station in Edinburgh. This was originally housed at High School Yards but quickly found a new home at King's Buildings in 1924, there linking to the Chemistry Department. His staff at the Institute was highly illustrious: including John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Lancelot Hogben, Julian Huxley, and (as a postgraduate) Honor Fell. At this time the UK’s first Pregnancy Diagnosis Laboratory was also set up under Crew as a tangential area of public benefit, linked to their research. In the 1930s their staff were boosted by scientists from Germany and Italy including Hermann Joseph Muller, Charlotte Auerbach and Guido Pontecorvo.

In 1921 he received a doctorate (DSc) on his work on sex-determination in frogs. He received an MD the same year and a PhD in 1923. In 1928 he was created the first Professor of Animal Genetics at Edinburgh University (a chair indirectly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation).

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1922. His proposers were James Cossar Ewart, Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer, James Hartley Ashworth and Sir Robert Blyth Greig. He served as the Society’s Secretary 1931 to 36 and as Vice-President 1936 to 39. He won their Keith Medal for the period 1937-9. In 1939 he was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

During the Second World War he established the Polish School of Medicine in Edinburgh, embracing medical refugees, which survived until 1949 and had a total of 228 graduates. During the war he was also Director of Medical Research for the War Office, with the rank of Brigadier. After the Second World War he held (1944-55) the Chair in Public Health at Edinburgh University. In 1955 he moved to Ain Shams University in Cairo as Professor of Social and Preventative Medicine. In 1957-8 he worked for the World Health Organisation as a visiting Professor at the University of Rangoon.

In 1958 his alma mater awarded him a Doctor of Letters (LLD).

He died on 26 May 1973.

Publications

• Animal Genetics: An Introduction to the Science of Animal Breeding (1925)
• Organic Inheritance in Man (1927)
• Genetics of Sexuality in Animals (1927)
• Heredity (1928)
• Sex Determination (1933)
• Genetics in Relation to Clinical Medicine (1947)
• Measurements of the Public Health (1948)
• Must Man Wage War?: Biological Aspects of War (1952)
• The Official Medical History of the Second World War (5 volumes) (1953-66)
• The Foundations of Genetics (1966)

Family

He married Helen Campbell Dykes, a fellow medical student, in 1912. She died in 1971 and he remarried the following year to Margaret Ogilvie Withof-Keus, who had previously served under him in the RAMC.

Artistic Recognition

His portrait, painted by Alfred Edward Borthwick, forms part of the Edinburgh University Art Collection. The National Portrait Gallery hold a bromide print of Crew taken by Walter Stoneman in 1945.