Philip Herries Gregory

Philip Herries Gregory (24 July 1907 in Exmouth, Devon, UK – 9 February 1986) was a British mycologist and phytopathologist. He established an international reputation as a pioneer of aerobiology and a leading expert on the liberation and dispersal of fungal spores and their relation to plant diseases and to human respiratory diseases. In 1957 he was elected to a one-year term as president of the British Mycological Society.

Biography During childhood, as a result of severe asthma which prevented him from regular school attendance, Philip H. Gregory had an erratic early education. At age 14 his asthma moderated and he became an enthusiast of outdoor excursions, meteorology, and natural history. and a D.I.C. and was searching for a medical mycologist to work with Andrew M. Davidson, a dermatologist and lecturer at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Gregory worked with Davidson in Winnipeg for about 3 years from the end of 1931 to the end of 1934 and they coauthored several papers. In 1932 in Winnipeg, Gregory married Margaret F. Culverhouse; they became engaged three years earlier in London. From 1935 to 1939 he did all of his fieldwork west of Truro and mostly in the Isles of Scilly. (The formula was subsequently extended by A. C. Chamberlain.) Gregory became interested in the production of penicillin by Penicillium chrysogenum Thom (then known as P. notatum Westling) and took a one-year secondment to work at Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., Biological Laboratories, Manchester. In 1948 Gregory published a multiple infection transformation, which is now often used. In 1951 Gregory, in collaboration with S. Waller, introduced the genus Cryptostroma.

In 1953 Gregory resigned his position as assistant director of Rothamsted's plant pathology laboratory to become a professor in the chair of botany at Imperial College London. He conducted his research at the Chelsea Physic Garden.

In 1958 Gregory returned to Rothamsted as head of the plant pathology department. at the Institute of Diseases of the Chest (now the National Heart and Lung Institute). provided the theoretical basis for much research on phytopathological epidemiology and forecasting, as well as sampling of spores and other airborne particles.

London University awarded Gregory the D.Sc. degree in 1949. In 1962 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was the president of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society in 1966. and the British Mycological Society's inaugural Benefactors' Lecture in 1984. He died in 1986; he was married and had a son, a daughter, and three grandchildren.

Selected publications Articles

(pamphlet, 16 pages, illustrated)

Books