E. C. Large

Ernest Charles Large (24 June 1902, Parsons Green, London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham – 25 August 1976) was an English engineer, novelist, mycologist, and phytopathologist, known as a pioneer of phytopathometry. For the academic year 1960–1961 he was the president of the British Mycological Society.

Biography After education at Clark's College in Putney, London and then at St Paul's School, London, he became in 1919 an apprentice at the engineering firm Gwynnes Pumps in Hammersmith, London. In the same year he became an evening student at Battersea Polytechnic Institute in London (which eventually became the University of Surrey) and graduated there in 1924 with a B.Sc. in engineering. For the four years following his graduation, he worked as a daytime engineer and studied at Battersea Polytechnic as an evening student of electrical engineering. At Battersea Polytechnic, he earned money as a demonstrator to evening classes in mechanical engineering. Hatschek developed a practical and inexpensive colloidal copper fungicide marketed under the trade name of Bouisol. From 1930 to 1945, Large was closely associated with the use of Bouisol and gradually became an expert in mycology and phytopathology. In the 1930s he was developed a dry bentonite-copper-oxychloride fungicide, usable for dusting or spraying plants. In 1936, Boots Pure Drug Company Ltd purchased the Colloidal Products Section and, after working for a time as a consultant for his new employer, Large became unemployed. The New Yorker praised Asleep in the Afternoon in a brief mention. His third (and final) novel Dawn in Andromeda was published in 1956. The three novels received favorable reviews. and once had tea with Eric Blair aka George Orwell and Blair's first wife Eileen.

From 1936 to 1940 Large attended evening classes at Chelsea Polytechnic (which later became the Chelsea College of Arts). Eventually he became a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry. In 1940 Jonathan Cape published Large's The Advance of the Fungi, a history of phytopathology, which was much esteemed by phytopathologists, as well as general readers. In 1941 he became employed as an assistant to A. Beaumont, of Seale-Hayne Agricultural College in Devonshire. Beaumont, an employee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, was the Advisory Mycologist for South-West England and from 1929 to 1939 did research on potato blight.

In 1946, the newly established National Agricultural Advisory Service transferred Large from the University of Seale-Hayne to the Agricultural School, Cambridge to work under William A. R. Dillon-Weston. At Cambridge, Large extended his knowledge of crop diseases beyond potato blight. Large was assigned by Moore to replace qualitative recording of plant diseases by quantitative methods of recording. Large demonstrated how progression curves for potato blight provide estimated of probable loss of crop yield and also showed how to estimate the likelihood that anti-fungal chemicals might destroy the stems of the plants treated with the chemicals. Assisted by the Agricultural Branch of the Meteorological Office, he developed effective methods of making regional forecasts in England and Wales for the dates during which potato blight outbreaks are likely to occur. At Harpenden, Large also did research in phytopathometry for choke (Epichloeh typhina) in cocksfoot seed crops, eelworm damage in clover, Verticillium wilt in alfalfa, and common scab (Streptomyces species) in potatoes. has over 2100 citations and "was for many years one of the most quoted papers in biological science". Findlay's earlier books Wayside Advance of Fungi (1940) and Woodland Fungi (1965) also contains reproductions of Large's paintings.

Selected publications Articles

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Non-fiction books abstract

Novels