Spencer Wharton Brown

Spencer Wharton Brown (28 November 1918 – 10 June 1977) was a professor and cyto-geneticist. He taught and researched at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1945 until his murder on June 10, 1977. Brown was internationally renowned and sometimes referred to as "Mr. Chromosome." He was the president of the International Congress of Genetics. Brown was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956 in the field of plant studies. He was the first to identify what is called paternal genome elimination in scale insects.

Life and work Brown was born in Vermillion, South Dakota. Spencer conducted cytological and karyological studies on tomatoes, Drosophila and was especially interested in maternal effects. He visited numerous laboratories around the world and in 1956 visited Trinidad to examine the genetics of banana. An association with the entomologist Frederick D. Bennett made him shift his interests to insect evolution and examined male haploidy in insects. He identified the elimination of paternal genomes in male scale insects and noticed variations across several families and examined the evolution of these systems.

Personal life At the age of 21 Brown married Roberta Schuknecht. After 18 years together the marriage ended in divorce.