Leslie Audus

Leslie John Audus (9 December 1911 – 5 May 2011) was a British botanist and an international authority on the hormones that control plant growth.

During World War II, while being held in a Japanese internment camp, he cultured yeast to feed and save the lives of his fellow POW's.

[3] While being held at the Jaarmarkt prisoner of war camp at Surubaya on Java, he used makeshift equipment and maize grain to produce yeast to supplement the diet of himself and his fellow POWs.

Accordingly, senior officers among the POWs asked Audus to produce yeast, as he had at Jaarmarkt, to provide the men with needed vitamins to survive.

These dietary supplements, in combination with the construction of a sea latrine that stopped a dysentery outbreak, helped lower POW deaths at the camp from 334 over a five-month period to 52 during the nine months preceding liberation.

Audus and his fellow prisoners left the camp on 1 August 1945, and when examined at a hospital afterwards, it turned out that he had sustained irreversible damage to his retinas.

[1] RAF Medical Officer Richard Philps wrote in his 1996 memoir Prisoner Doctor: "The men who survived Haruku and subsequent camps have reason to be extremely grateful to Leslie J Audus.... During our first critical time at Haruku, with deaths from beriberi mounting and blindness from Vitamin B deficiency on the increase, he, at first single-handedly, and later with a Dutch botanist, Dr. (now Professor) Johan Gerard ten Houten, devised a method of producing yeast, an abundant source of Vitamin B."

Philps noted that Audus was working "against almost impossible odds and with the most primitive equipment," but that his efforts were "so successful that the onset of blindness was halted in those already affected, no new cases occurred, and other changes due to Vitamin B deficiency began to improve – a remarkable feat of biological manipulation.

First, Audus published a paper entitled "Biology Behind Barbed Wire" in the scientific journal Discovery in 1946, in which he recounted his POW experiences.

[6] After his death a woman named Amanda Johnston wrote that Audus had been "an inspiration to those of us whose fathers were on the terrible Haruku draft and who never spoke of it.

[3] Audus published his first paper entitled "Biology Behind Barbed Wire" in the scientific journal Discovery in 1946, in which he recounted his POW experiences.

"But the strength of character and tenacity that had brought him through the horrors of war meant that he did not flinch from expressing his views forcefully against injustice or political expediency.

In addition to his scientific work, he was interested in constructing and restoring furniture, and also built a short-wave radio in order to communicate with colleagues and wartime friends.

"[4] After his death a woman named Amanda Johnston wrote that Audus had been "an inspiration to those of us whose fathers were on the terrible Haruku draft and who never spoke of it.