J Trevor Williams 1938–2015 IBPGR director and

Authors: M T Jackson

Publish Date: 2015/07/01

Volume: 62, Issue: 6, Pages: 809-813

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Abstract

One legacy of Trevor’s contribution to the conservation of plant genetic resources can be found deep beneath the Arctic permafrost on the island of Spitsbergen where millions of seeds of crop varieties and wild species—many collected through the efforts of IBPGR in the 1970s and 1980s—are in backup storage in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault SGSV popularly known as the ‘Doomsday Vault’ Opened 7 years ago the SGSV is one major achievement of a plan set in motion three decades earlier by IBPGR to establish an international network of regional and national genebanks The proposal to store backup samples of international genebank collections under the permafrost was first developed by IBPGR in 1988 IBPGR 1990 p 10 building on the experience of the Nordic Genebank that had already used an abandoned coal mine on Svalbard for the same purposeBorn in Thingwall Cheshire in June 1938 Trevor developed a lifelong passion for natural history particularly botany from an early age He learned to name all the local flowers when evacuated to the Isle of Man during the Second World War after the family home was bomb damagedAfter high school he was awarded an Open Exhibition to Selwyn College Cambridge University in 1956 to study medicine But after just one year he transferred to botany having been advised that ‘too many medical doctors were being trained’ He graduated in botany in 1959 As would transpire later in his career medicine’s loss was genetic conservation’s gainAfter Cambridge he joined eminent plant ecologist and population biologist Professor John Harper in the Department of Agricultural Botany at the University of Wales Bangor now Bangor University completing his PhD in 1962 on the weed biology of Chenopodium Williams 1962 Trevor was a coauthor of one of the most significant papers published from the Harper laboratory Harper et al 1965 He then spent 18 months teaching at Goldsmiths College University of London before taking a research fellowship in the Geobotanical Institute at ETH Zurich under the supervision of phytogeographer Heinz Ellenberg In 1968 he was awarded the Dr sci nat degree for his research on the nitrogen relations and ecology of wet fertilized meadows in Switzerland southern Germany and France Williams 1968 On his return to the UK he was appointed lecturer in biology at Lanchester Polytechnic now Coventry UniversityHe was elected to the Council of the British Ecological Society in 1970 for 4 years and served the Botanical Society of the British Isles Warwickshire Nature Conservation and the Birmingham Natural History Society in various capacities He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of LondonIn September 1969 Professor Jack Hawkes internationallyrenowned genetic resources scientist and potato expert recruited Trevor to join the Department of Botany at the University of Birmingham He was appointed Lecturer and Course Tutor for the graduate MSc course on Conservation and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources that saw its first intake of four students from Brazil Canada and the UK that same monthWhile at the University of Birmingham Trevor initiated genetic resources research on the genus Beta FordLloyd and Williams 1975 and this included participation in collecting missions particularly to Turkey in 1972 In fact the collections became the forerunners of subsequent European and World Beta germplasm collections that are of current importance The collecting experience also served Trevor in good stead for directing genetic resources collecting of many other crops under the auspices of IBPGR One of the other outcomes of these collecting activities was to provide a taxonomic footing for Beta conservation Trevor jointly named a new genus of beet which at the time was perhaps controversial Williams and Ford Lloyd 1974 It was subsequently shown to be not only a bold but a scientifically correct move as many molecular genetic assessments have confirmedHowever in 1976 Trevor was seconded for 2 years to IBPGR as Genetic Resources Officer/Senior Genetic Resources Officer in the Crop Ecology and Genetic Resources Unit of the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO in Rome home to IBPGR since its foundation in 1974 He resigned from the University of Birmingham in June 1978 when he was appointed Executive Secretary of IBPGR

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