Sir Brian Keith Follett FRS DL (born 22 February 1939) is a British biologist, academic administrator, and policy maker.
Knighted in 1992, he won the Frink Medal (1993) and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1984, and served as the chair of the UK government's teacher training agency[3] and Arts and Humanities Research Council, and was Vice-Chancellor of University of Warwick.
His work included the development of the first radioimmunoassay to measure bird luteinizing hormone (LH) in collaboration with Frank Cunningham (Reading University) and Colin Scanes.
In 1978 as the Chair of Zoology at Bristol, his research interests expanded to include mammals, notably sheep, and wild birds such as albatrosses, swans, gulls and partridges.
Subsequently, Takashi Yoshimura in Japan used the quail to investigate these changes in molecular terms and was able to connect these into the separate discoveries that thyroid hormones play a critical role in the photoperiodic response (see below).
In simple terms, removal of the thyroid glands stopped refractoriness developing in starlings (and other birds) as well as sheep, and the animals remained in breeding condition perpetually and were not photorefractory.
The University improved its ranking in the published league tables with strengths in Engineering (Warwick Manufacturing Group), Mathematics, Economics, Sociology and the Humanities.
It opened a graduate-entry medical school in 2001, President Clinton, with Prime Minister Blair, visited the university and gave a valedictory speech on foreign policy.
[citation needed] Follett has chaired committees for the UK government including reporting on the future of university libraries,[8] research in the humanities, and the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001;[9] and on the management and appraisal of clinical academics (following the AlderHey scandal).