James Franklin Crow was
Professor Emeritus of
Genetics at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison died he was 95.
(January 18, 1916 – January 4, 2012)
Some of his most significant peer-reviewed contributions were coauthored with
Motoo Kimura.
[6][7][8][9][10]
His major contribution to the field, however, is arguably his teaching.
He wrote an influential introductory textbook on genetics and a more
advanced one with Kimura, and the list of his graduate and undergraduate
students and postdocs includes
Alexey Kondrashov,
James Bull,
Joe Felsenstein,
Russell Lande, Dan Hartl, Takeo Maruyama, Terumi Mukai,
Wen-Hsiung Li, Chung-I Wu, Charles Langley, and many others.
Biography
Crow was a pioneer and giant in the field of genetics. His University
of Wisconsin genetics faculty profile reviews his historic
contributions through research, teaching, public service, ethical
analysis, and leadership. He was a member of the
National Academy of Sciences, The
American Philosophical Society, the
World Academy of Art and Science, the
National Academy of Medicine, and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a long-time member of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, playing viola. He was a president of both the
Genetics Society of America and the
American Society of Human Genetics. He was a foreign member of the
Royal Society. He helped define the meaning of genetic counseling.
Early life and education
Crow was born in 1916 in
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, where his father was a teacher at
Ursinus College. The family moved to
Wichita, Kansas, two and a half years later, in 1918, where Crow was part of the
1918 flu pandemic. He went to school in Wichita, then to
Friends University, at the time a
Quaker school, also in Wichita, graduating in 1937.
At school, he enjoyed physics and chemistry, but pursued chemistry
more strongly at university. He picked up biology as well, and double
majored in chemistry and biology. A genetics course in his junior year
was his first exposure to that field, even though the syllabus omitted
the
modern synthesis.
Delaying the decision of whether to become a biologist or chemist,
Crow applied for graduate fellowships in both biology and biochemistry.
He took up the first positive reply, a position with
H. J. Muller at the
University of Texas at Austin,
in spite of knowing that Muller was in Russia at the time. It turned
out that Muller had no intention of returning to his position in Texas,
and so J. T. Patterson became Crow's supervisor there. Under the
influence of Muller, Patterson was starting to switch to
Drosophila genetics, having previously worked on the embryology of the
armadillo, and so it was that Crow came to study the genetic isolating mechanisms in the
Drosophila mulleri group. This included a combination of doing mating crosses between species and looking for
chromosome rearrangements using
polytene chromosomes.
(Polytene chromosomes are large aggregations of actual chromosomes
which, once appropriately stained, facilitate the discovery of
chromosome rearrangements through an ordinary
light microscope. Polytene chromosomes are mostly found in the
salivary glands
of some species.) In his studies of pre-mating isolation, Crow was one
of the first to study genetic reinforcement, and also observed that
species occurring together were sexually isolated, while
those living apart were not.
A great influence on Crow at the time was W.S. Stone, who encouraged
him to learn more mathematics, while he himself knew none. Crow later
admitted to struggling with some of the advanced maths and physics
courses he took as a result, but also said they had been rewarding.
Dartmouth College and the war
Crow graduated with his PhD in 1941 and moved to
Dartmouth College just prior to the American entry into
World War II, where he remained until 1948. The original plan had been to get a postdoctoral fellowship to work with
Sewall Wright at the
University of Chicago, but this proved difficult just at the start of the war.
His appointment in Dartmouth was to teach genetics and general
zoology,
but as faculty were drafted off into military endeavors, Crow took on
an increasing number of courses. Crow particularly delighted in being
able to teach
embryology and
comparative anatomy.
When it seemed likely that he himself would be drafted, Crow took a
course in navigation, at which, owing to his mathematical training, he
proved so adept that he was asked to teach it. As
parasitology became relevant to the war (as it did on the opposing front, where
Willi Hennig was active in this area), he was asked to also teach parasitology and
haematology. Not long after, he was also teaching
statistics.
It may be that, having to teach many hours each day, Crow discovered
his love for teaching at this point. He later recounted that there were
several students all of whose courses were taught by him.
He, like many of his colleagues of the era, had college-time
involvement with pacifist groups that had communist leanings. During
WWII, he tried to enlist, but was deferred until the end due to his
teaching commitments.
Race and IQ controversy
Crow wrote "Genetic Theories and Influences: Comments on the Value of Diversity," an article in the
Harvard Educational Review reprinted in the review's reprint series
[11] responding to
Arthur Jensen's 1969 article, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Academic Achievement?"
Crow also did research and writing in how DNA in sperm degrades as
men age, though repeated copying, and can then be passed along to
children in permanently degraded form, which they likely then pass on as
well. As a result, he said that the "greatest mutational health hazard
to the human genome is fertile older males". He described mutations that
have a direct visible effect on the child's health and also mutations
that can be latent or have minor visible effects on the child's health;
many such mutations allow the child to reproduce, but cause more serious
problems for grandchildren, greatgrandchildren and later generations
[12]
Research Description
Much of Crow’s research has been in the area of theoretical
population genetics, but he has often ventured into the laboratory. Over
a career that spanned more than 50 years, Crow and his collaborators
studied a variety of traits in Drosophila, dissected the genetics of DDT
resistance, measured the effects of minor mutations on the overall
fitness of populations, described the behavior of mutations that do not
play the selection game by Darwin’s rules, and investigated many other
subjects. His theoretical work has touched virtually every important
subject in population genetics. Crow developed the concept of genetic
load, has contributed to the theory of random drift in small
populations, has studied of the effects of non-random mating and
age-structured populations, and has considered the question, “What good
is sex?” He also developed ways to estimate inbreeding in human
populations by making use of the way in which surnames are “inherited,”
and was a world expert on the genetic effects of low level ionizing
radiation In addition to his many research publications, Crow published
many reviews and appreciations of the work of his colleagues. His book
on population genetics, written with Motoo Kimura, is a combination of
textbook and monograph a major contribution to the literature of
population genetics research and still the classic in its field.
Public Service
Crow chaired the Department of Medical Genetics for five years and
the Laboratory of Genetics (Genetics plus Medical Genetics) for a total
of eight years. He also served as Acting Dean of the UW Medical School
for 2 years. He was President of the
Genetics Society of America and the
American Society of Human Genetics. He was the co-editor-in-chief of the journal
GENETICS
and edited its perspectives section from 1987 until 2008. Crow served
at the national level as a member of the General Advisory Committee to
the Director of NIH and of the executive council of the National
Committee on Radiation Protection, chaired the NIH Genetics Study
Section and the NIH Mammalian Genetics Study Section, and chaired
several committees for the National Academy of Sciences including a
committee to study forensic uses of DNA fingerprinting.
In addition, Crow for many years played viola for the
Madison Symphony Orchestra
and served as President of the Madison Civic Music Society and of the
Madison Symphony Orchestra. He led a fund-raising drive to establish an
endowment for the Pro Arte String Quartet.
Crow was a member of the
National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, The
American Philosophical Society, the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
World Academy of Art and Science.
He was an honorary Fellow of the Japan Academy and a Fellow of the
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. He died of
congestive heart failure in 2012.
[13]
Selected publications
- Crow, J. F. (2010). "Wright and Fisher on Inbreeding and Random Drift". Genetics 184 (3): 609–611. doi:10.1534/genetics.109.110023. PMC 2845331. PMID 20332416. edit
- Crow, J. F. (2010). "On epistasis: Why it is unimportant in polygenic directional selection". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365 (1544): 1241. doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0275. edit
- Crow, J. F. (2009). "Mayr, mathematics and the study of evolution". Journal of Biology 8 (2): 13. doi:10.1186/jbiol117. PMC 2687772. PMID 19291256. edit
- Crow, J. F. (2008). "Maintaining evolvability". Journal of genetics 87 (4): 349–353. PMID 19147924. edit
- Crow, J. F. (2008). "Just and Unjust: E. E. Just (1883-1941)". Genetics 179 (4): 1735–1740. doi:10.1534/genetics.104.94094. PMC 2516054. PMID 18711217. edit
- Crow, J. F. (2008). "Mid-Century Controversies in Population Genetics". Annual Review of Genetics 42: 1–16. doi:10.1146/annurev.genet.42.110807.091612. PMID 18652542. edit
- Crow, J. F. (2008). "Commentary: Haldane and beanbag genetics". International Journal of Epidemiology 37 (3): 442–445. doi:10.1093/ije/dyn048. PMID 18522983. edit
- Crow, J. F. (2007). "Haldane, Bailey, Taylor and recombinant-inbred lines". Genetics 176 (2): 729–732. PMC 1894602. PMID 17579238. edit
- Gulisija, D.; Crow, J. F. (2007). "Inferring Purging from Pedigree Data". Evolution 61 (5): 1043–1051. doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.2007.00088.x. PMID 17492959. edit
- Crow, J. F.; Lindsley, D.; Lucchesi, J. (2006). "Edward Novitski: Drosophila Virtuoso". Genetics 174 (2): 549–553. doi:10.1534/genetics.104.65953. PMC 1602066. PMID 17068121. edit
- Crow, J. F. (2006). "H. J. Muller and the "competition hoax"". Genetics 173 (2): 511–514. PMC 1526522. PMID 16790582. edit
- Crow, J.F. 2006. Motoo Kimura, 1924-1994. Handbook of Philosophy of Biology.
- Crow, J.F. 2006. Sewall Wright, 1889-1988. Handbook of Philosophy of Biology.
- Crow, J. F. (2005). "Hermann Joseph Muller, Evolutionist". Nature Reviews Genetics 6 (12): 941–945. doi:10.1038/nrg1728. PMID 16341074. edit
- Crow, J. F. (2006). "Age and sex effects on human mutation rates: An old problem with new complexities". Journal of radiation research. 47 Suppl B: B75–B82. PMID 17019055. edit
- Crow, J. F.; Bender, W. (2004). "Edward B. Lewis, 1918-2004". Genetics 168 (4): 1773–1783. PMC 1448758. PMID 15611154. edit
- Crow, J.F. 2004. Assessing population subdivision. In Evolutionary
Theory and Processes: Modern Horizons. Ed. by S.P. Wasser. Pp. 35-42.
Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- Crow, J. F. (2003). "Was there life before 1953?". Nature Genetics 33 (4): 449–450. doi:10.1038/ng0403-449. PMID 12665867. edit
- Garcia-Dorado, A.; Caballero, A.; Crow, J. F. (2003). "On the Persistence and Pervasiveness of a New Mutation". Evolution 57 (11): 2644–2646. doi:10.1111/j.0014-3820.2003.tb01507.x. PMID 14686539. edit
- Crow, J. F. 2002. Unequal by nature: a geneticist’s perspective on human differences. Dedalus Winter 2002:81-88.
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