Rowland Biffen

Sir Rowland Harry Biffen FRS[1] (28 May 1874, in Cheltenham – 12 July 1949)[2] was a British botanist, mycologist, geneticist and a professor of agricultural botany at the University of Cambridge who worked on breeding wheat varieties.

Biffen was the oldest child of Henry John who was headmaster of Christ Church school in Cheltenham, and his wife, Mary.

He then worked as a university demonstrator, researching fungi under Harry Marshall Ward and obtained a patent for the handling of rubber latex.

Among the most important wheat varieties he bred were Little Joss (1910. named inadvertently by Sir Rider Haggard[6]) and Yeoman (1916).

He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1914, was knighted in 1925, and received an honorary DSc in 1935 from the University of Reading.