Professor John Edwards; Geneticist whose work on chromosome defects included the identification of Edwards syndrome
Hyfler/Rosner
Geneticist whose work on chromosome defects included the
identification of Edwards syndrome
The Independent
17 November 2007
Caroline Richmond
Edwards syndrome is, after Down's syndrome, the most common
disease caused by having an extra chromosome. Its discovery
was one of many advances made by John Edwards, Emeritus
Professor of Genetics at Oxford University.
Others included suggesting that placental sampling,
introduced to detect Rhesus-negative babies, should also be
used to detect chromosome abnormalities such as Down's
syndrome. This is now a routine procedure. He contributed to
our knowledge of the inherited form of hydrocephalus, and
also reported a series of 20 cases of a rare genetic
disease, Cornelia de Lange syndrome. He developed a
widely-used research tool called the "Oxford grid" to map
and compare gene sequences in different animal species,
including humans.
Edwards was the son of a London surgeon. He didn't learn to
read until he was nine, in part because he was rarely read
to, which he later said gave him time to think. From
Uppingham School, he went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge to
study medicine, doing his clinical training at the Middlesex
Hospital in London. While at the Middlesex he married
Felicity Toussaint, a fellow medical student from Oxford.
He then did his National Service in the Artists' Rifles,
part of the territorial SAS, where he learned to parachute.
He described parachuting from a balloon as the most
frightening experience of his life. He followed this with
nine months as ship's doctor - doubling as dentist - on a
scientific research ship, the John Biscoe, voyaging round
the South Atlantic and Antarctic. On his return he was found
to have tuberculosis at the top of one lung, for which he
was prescribed bed-rest. He passed the time by teaching
himself statistical methodology.
After his recovery, he spent three years in junior medical
jobs in general medicine, neurology, pathology and
psychiatry, at hospitals in London and Hampshire. In 1956 he
joined Birmingham University, where he spent 27 years. He
started as Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine in
the Institute of Child Health, and rose to be Professor of
Human Genetics, heading a new department of clinical
genetics. It was during his first year there, when placental
sampling had been introduced nationally, that he suggested
via The Lancet that it could be used to detect genetic
abnormalities.
During his time at Birmingham, he spent 1958-60 at the
Population Genetics Unit of Oxford University, returning to
Birmingham regularly, where he recognised the defects caused
by having an extra chromosome 18. He reported these in The
Lancet and the syndrome was later named after him.
He spent a sabbatical (1960-61) at the Philadelphia
Children's Hospital, and 1966-67 at the New York Blood
Center and Cornell Medical Center. During his time at
Philadelphia he attended a now-famous genetics course at Bar
Harbor in Maine, organised and presented by Professor Victor
McKusick of Baltimore. They became friends, and in later
years Edwards taught in the course. In 1979, his last year
at Birmingham, he was elected to fellowship of the Royal
Society.
As Professor of Genetics at Oxford from 1979, his main work
was in the development of the "Oxford grid", a chart for
mapping and comparing gene sequences in different species of
animals; he found comparable linked strings of genes in a
range of animals, a concept called "syngeny". In Sydney,
where Edwards did collaborative work, there is an "Oxgrid
project".
He made many other contributions: he played a major role in
human gene-mapping workshops held between 1973 and 1991;
directed the West Midlands Human Cytogenetics Laboratory for
four years; and was Visiting Professor at Newfoundland
University. He was a genetics consultant to the World Health
Organisation from 1972, and a consultant genetics
investigator in Iceland, which is extensively studied for
its compact gene pool. This meant several visits to Iceland,
on one occasion overlapping with the Fischer-Spassky chess
matches and meeting Boris Spassky. His interests in
restricted gene pools also extended to Labrador,
Newfoundland, pigs in Australia and sheep in New Zealand.
At the Social Medicine Department at Birmingham, John
Edwards had been mentored by Lancelot Hogben, author of
Mathematics for the Million, one of the most successful
science books ever written. John Edwards's brother Anthony
had a parallel career as a statistical geneticist at
Cambridge, originally working under the statistician R.A.
Fisher. The two brothers were nicknamed "Hogben's Edwards"
and "Fisher's Edwards".
Edwards, slender and boffin-like, was loved and respected
for his support for his junior workers, his good nature and
his altruism. Sir Walter Bodmer, who preceded him as
professor at Oxford, said, "He had a fine feel for the
subject of human genetics, including a historical
perspective, and always an original way of looking at
problems and presenting them." Sir David Weatherall, Regius
Professor of Medicine at Oxford, said Edwards was "one of
the nicest and cleverest of our field". And Professor Victor
McKusick, of Johns Hopkins, said, "John was of quick wit in
both senses of the word. His humour was rarely if ever
malicious or unkind. Among his colleagues his
absentmindedness was legendary, and it enhanced rather than
detracted from the respect in which his colleagues held
him."
Edwards read widely, with a particular fondness for Martin
Gardner, Edward Gibbon and G.K. Chesterton. He had a
recreational interest in mathematics, and went walking,
skiing and gliding. He was energetic, happily chopping trees
into logs. When his children were young, he would take them
to the cinema and work out mathematical formulae on the
backs of punch-cards in the near-darkness. He did his own
computer programming throughout his career.
In his retirement he took an interest in leprosy and
collaborated with the head of the Indian medical research
council. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000 but
remained active until July last year.
Caroline Richmond
John Hilton Edwards, geneticist: born London 26 March 1928;
Ship's Surgeon, Falkland Islands Dependency Survey 1952-53;
Lecturer, Department of Social Medicine, Birmingham
University 1956-58, 1961-65, Senior Lecturer 1965-66, Reader
in Human Genetics 1966-69, Professor of Human Genetics
1969-79; Member, MRC Unit on Population Genetics, Oxford
1958-60; Geneticist, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
1960-61; Visiting Professor of Paediatrics, Cornell
University and Senior Investigator, New York Blood Center
1967-68; FRS 1979; Professor of Human Genetics, Oxford
University 1979-95 (Emeritus); Professorial Fellow, Ke ble
College, Oxford 1979-95; married 1953 Felicity Toussaint
(two sons, two daughters); died Oxford 11 October 2007.
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