Biographical Memoirs Volume 66 (1995) / Chapter Skim
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Royal Alexander Brink
Royal Alexander Brink
Pages 24-43
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From page 25... ...
Using maize as his principal experimental organism, Alex Brink and his students demonstrated that a gene could be expressed postmeiotically in the pollen grain, reported the first explanation for semi-sterility, and mapped many mutants. In investigations of seed failure in interspecific crosses, Brink and D
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From page 26... ...
On the day of his death, October 2, 1984, sixteen years after his formal retirement from the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, he had spent the morning in his experimental plots endeavoring to identify the corn mutant lines that would best serve for homegrown supplementation to enhance clesirable fermentation in alfalfa-hay silage. His report of this venture was posthumously published in Maydica (19841-.
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From page 27... ...
At one point he wrote, "One of my reactions to advancing age has been an increasing reluctance to sacrifice a diminishing future by becoming preoccupied with the past." He participated in the meetings of the genetics societies of America and Canada in Vancouver in August 1984 less than two months before his death—and, upon receiving the Morgan Medal there, he delivered a brief statement in part relating his work, begun some thirty-five years earlier, to the still-challenging problem of "the meaning of transposable elements for make-up of the chromosomes." Born of generations of farming people on a dairy farm near Woodstock in Ontario, Canada, Alex attended a oneroom country school and, at age eleven, passed the selective written entrance examination for high school, the Collegiate Institute in Woodstock, a school with a rigid curriculum and exacting standards. Up early to help with milking and farm chores, he walked to the railro act for the five-mile ride to school.
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From page 28... ...
During the summer, he worked for the Chemistry Department at a soil experiment station, for the Physics Department surveying farms for tile drainage, and as an assistant to two county agricultural representatives in northern Ontario. In his spare time during the last summer before his senior year he made, on his own initiative, a field study of the glacial geology and soils of the Kaministikwai valley.
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From page 29... ...
He was in debt and couIct not afford to make up an academic deficiency. Following a summer course in the milling and baking laboratory of Ontario Agricultural College, he took a job in the testing laboratory of Western Canada Flour Mills in Winnipeg.
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From page 30... ...
Developing methods for the cultivation of pollen on artificial media, he applied his techniques to the study of physiological effects of the waxy gene in corn and its action as an agent of control in clevelopment.
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From page 31... ...
But the crop was unreliable, mainly because of winter killing; in 1928, for example, two successive severe winters had reducer} the hay acreage by more than one-third from the 1926 level. With his background in soil science and a concern for soil conservation that continued throughout his life, Brink felt strongly that a productive sod crop like alfalfa was a primary requirement in any general scheme to conserve Wisconsin farm soils.
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From page 32... ...
Little real genetic work had been done with the plant, however. Later he wrote, "The application of genetic principles to breeding alfalfa for greater winter hardiness and disease resistance gave promise not only of contributions to the solution of a major agricultural problem, but also of providing opportunity for exploratory efforts in basic plant genetics research.
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From page 33... ...
By 1935 about 840,000 tons of these materials had been made available to farmers at less than half the usual cost. With further extensions about thirty million tons of agricultural lime were distributed in Wisconsin under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Works Progress Administration relief measures, and county programs continued after the work relief support had been discontinued.
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From page 34... ...
In 1938 Brink and Smith published the results of a study showing that bitterness of the fresh forage and toxicity of spoiled sweet clover hay had a common basis in coumarin (lL9381. It was in following up that clue that K
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From page 35... ...
Over the same interval that his contributions to adaptive research and service were coming to fruition, Brink's explorations at the forefront of basic genetic knowledge also proceeded at a remarkable pace. There followed, cluring 192~29, a series of pioneering papers on gene expression in, and environmental effects on, the development of the pollen grain, especially in corn, including the clemonstration (contemporaneously with M
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From page 36... ...
grown on an artificial nutrient medium they could survive through the seedling stage to maturity. They found provocative indications, too, of at least one "embryo factor" that, when added to the medium, promoted the growth of otherwise abortive immature embryos.
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From page 37... ...
Alex Brink lived to see the first results of investigations into the molecular structure and behavior of the transposable elements, and he followed these with interest. It will not be long before there are also molecular explanations for paramutation.
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From page 38... ...
Future investigation will show whether the assumption of an additional link, involving chromosome substances with paragenenc properties, and the beginning of the chain between gene and end product, will aid in reversing the trend recognized as separating the study of heredity from that of development, and so putting the two disciplines on convergent paths. These thoughts were too far ahead of their time to be widely appreciated, and in any case, their realization clependec]
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From page 39... ...
He described the deepest satisfaction in his academic life as seeing "a graduate student effectively launched on a rewarding professional career," and a good many students in addition to those who claimed him as their major professor had him to thank for that concern. WE HAVE MADE EXTENSIVE use of a brief autobiography written by Alexander Brink in the last years of his life.
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From page 40... ...
Proceedings of the Mendel Centennial Symposium sponsored by the Genetics Society of America, Fort Collins, Colorado. Universit,v of Wisconsin Press ~ 1965]
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From page 41... ...
The relation between light variegated and medium variegated pericarp in maize. Genetics 37:519-44.
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From page 42... ...
73:273-96. 1984 Maize endosperm mutants affecting soluble carbohydrate content as potential additives in preparing silage from high protein forages.
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