Jeffrey Harborne

Jeffrey Barry Harborne FRS[1] (1 September 1928, in Bristol – 21 July 2002) was a British chemist who specialised in phytochemistry.

He contributed to more than 40 books and 270 research papers and was a pioneer in ecological biochemistry, particularly in the complex chemical interactions between plants, microbes and insects.

He earned a PhD in 1953 with a thesis on the naturally occurring oxygen heterocyclic compounds with Professor Wilson Baker (1900–2002).

[citation needed] Between 1953 and 1955 he worked as a postdoc with Professor Theodore Albert Geissman at the University of California, Los Angeles, studying phenolic plant pigments, including anthocyanins.

After his return to the UK, he joined the Potato Genetics group at the John Innes Research Institute, then located at Bayfordbury.

His time at the John Innes ended when the Potato Genetics group was wound up, and the institution itself moved to Norwich.

He published on chemotaxonomy as in his research articles on the genetic control of expression of anthocyanins, flavones and aurones in the primrose family (Primulaceae) in snapdragons (Antirrhinum) and a number of other plants.

In the scientific journal Natural Product Reports he wrote a series of review articles about the discovery of anthocyanins and other flavonoids.

His niece, Katharine Harborne, studied Horticultural Botany at the University of Reading from 1979 to 1981 and became a plant pathologist researching the epidemiology of Sugarcane Mosaic Virus for the South African Sugar Association at Mount Edgecombe.