Cathie Martin

Catherine Rosemary Martin (born April 1955)

Education Martin received a first class honours degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. She then went on to obtain her PhD in Biochemistry in 1981, also from Cambridge.

Research and career Her research has included work on blood oranges and high anthocyanin purple tomatoes.

After a period as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cambridge she moved to the John Innes Centre's department of genetics in 1983. She was the first to identify genes which regulated cell shape in plants.

With Liam Dolan, Alison Mary Smith, George Coupland, Nicholas Harberd, Jonathan Jones, Robert Sablowski and Abigail Amey she is a co-author of the textbook Plant Biology.

She was the editor-in-chief of The Plant Cell, as well as the first woman and first non-American to hold this post. and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) most promising innovator 2014. Cathie's research into Purple Tomatoes gained her and Eugenio Butelli BBSRC's most promising innovator award in 2014. She has also been recognised by:

Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) President's Medal, 1990 Awarded EMBO Membership in 2011 Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), 2013 BBSRC most promising innovator, 2014 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018 Awarded the Rank Prize for Nutrition in 2021