Francis Gerald William Knowles
Sir Francis Gerald William Knowles, 6th baronet (9 March 1915 – 13 July 1974) was a distinguished British research biologist and zoologist, a Fellow of the Royal Society, who held the chair of anatomy at King's College London where he was Dean, to which he had come by a somewhat unorthodox route.
Following graduation, he was awarded the Oxford University Naples scholarship, which enabled him to carry out research at the Stazione Zoologica, Italy, in 1937–8, where he began investigating the role of hormones in the regulation of colour change in lampreys and crustaceans.
He also continued his researches on crustacean colour change, working during school holidays at marine biological laboratories with support from the Royal Society and the Nuffield Foundation.
In his later years at Marlborough, Knowles became aware of the new perspectives that had been opened in comparative endocrinology through the discovery of neurosecretion: the process by which certain nerve cells secrete hormones into the bloodstream.
It is greatly to the credit of the Birmingham medical faculty of that time that faith in the Department of Anatomy was sufficient to gain acceptance of Zuckerman's views, and Knowles moved from Marlborough to take up a university appointment.
[2] Quickly establishing himself as a dynamic biologist, satisfied with nothing less than perfection in technique,[3] Knowles expanded his researches to include the study of neurosecretory pathways in the brain and pituitary gland of the dogfish and, later, of the rhesus monkey.
[2] His flair for organization also showed itself in 1962, when he was largely responsible for the planning behind a NATO Advanced Study Institute on Techniques in Endocrine Research which was held at Stratford upon Avon.
His studies brought him a Readership in 1963, and "for his great contributions to science",[1] election as Fellow of the Royal Society in 1966 and a personal Chair, with the title of Professor of Comparative Endocrinology, in 1967.
[4] He died suddenly in 1974 at the comparatively young age of 59, before completing the editorial work on the volume summarising the proceedings of the symposium (Neurosecretion – the final endocrine pathway).
[4] In a tribute from his fellow editors at Springer-Verlag, they recalled " a highly distinguished investigator, a scholar with unusually broad interest, a man with a keen, analytical mind and critical judgement who enjoyed life to the fullest.
1951) who succeeded to the baronetcy, and three daughters, as well as a stepdaughter born to Ruth and her first husband, Dickie Hulse, an RAF fighter pilot killed in action during the Second World War.
