Malcolm Robert Irwin

Malcolm Robert Irwin (2 March 1897, Artesian, South Dakota – 12 October 1987, Madison, Wisconsin) was an American agronomist and pioneering immunogeneticist.

Education and career He received his bachelor's degree in agriculture in 1920 from Iowa State College, later renamed Iowa State University. From 1921 to 1924 he was a teacher at the American Farm School in Thessaloniki (Greece). Irvin then began graduate study under Ernest W. Lindström (1891–1948) at the recently established department of genetics of Iowa State University and received his Ph.D. there in 1928.

Awards and honors 1938 — Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal of the American Academy of Sciences 1950 — election to membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences 1962 — Morrison Award from the American Society of Animal Science 1965 — Hermann von Nathusius Medal of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Züchtungskunde (German Society for Animal Breeding); awarded "In recognition of his groundbreaking work in the field of immunogenetics and the study of blood types in domesticated animals"

Selected publications The inheritance of resistance to the Danysz bacillus in the rat. Genetics. 14(4):337–365. 1929 Dissimilarities between antigenic properties of red blood cells of dove hybrid and parental genera. Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med. 29:850–851. 1932 with B. A. Beach and F. N. Bell: Studies on the bactericidal action of bovine whole blood and serum towards Brucella abortus and Brucella suis. J. Infect. Dis. 58:15-22. 1936 Immuno-genetic studies of species relationships in columbidae. J. Gen. 35(3):351–373. 1938 A genetic analysis of species differences in Columbidae. Genetics 24(5):709–721. 1939 with W. E. Briles and W. H. McGibbon: On multiple alleles effecting cellular antigens in the chicken. Genetics 35(6):633–652. 1950 with Clyde Stormont and R. D. Owen: The B and C systems of bovine blood groups. Genetics 36(2):134–161. 1951