John Fincham

Who was John Fincham?

John Robert Stanley Fincham FRS FRSE was a noted British geneticist who made important contributions to biochemical genetics and microbial genetics. He obtained the first direct evidence for the "one gene-one enzyme" hypothesis, using mutants of Neurospora crassa deficient in a specific enzyme called glutamate dehydrogenase.

Fincham was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences. He earned his PhD in the Botany School at Cambridge and then did a year's postgraduate research at the California Institute of Technology with Sterling Emerson.

Fincham was the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge between 1984 and 1991. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1978.