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Chromosome Res (2015) 23:343414
DOI 10.1007/s10577-014-9447-3
20th International Chromosome Conference (ICCXX)
50th Anniversary, University of Kent, Canterbury, 1st4th September 2014
Darren K. Griffin & Katie E. Fowler & Peter J. I. Ellis &
Dean A. Jackson
Published online: 23 January 2015# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Dear ColleaguesWelcome to ICCXX
On behalf of the International Chromosome and Genome Society (ICGS), in September 2014 we welcomed several hundred delegates to the beautiful city of Canterbury. The programme was distinguished as always by its high scientific interest and contained ample opportunity for social interaction.
It is 50 years since Cyril Darlington first initiated the (then Oxford) Chromosome Conferences and this
meeting was the 20th to be held. Dubbed by his biographer (Oren Solomon Harman) as the man who invented the chromosome, Cyril Dean Darlington was born in Chorley, Lancashire in 1903. He was educated at Mercers School, Holborn, 191217, St. Pauls School, 191720 and then, in 192023, came to Kent to study at Wye College, Ashfordjust down the road from the conference venue. In 1923 he began an association of more than 30 years with the John Innes Institute, starting as a volunteer but later becoming head of Cytology in 1937 and Director in 1939. It was at the John Innes that he did much of his groundbreaking work on chromosomes, augmented by expeditions overseas and through collaboration with many distinguished British, American and Russian colleagues. He resigned in 1953 and accepted the Sherardian Professorship of Botany at Oxford where he took a keen interest in the Botanic Garden, creating the Genetic Garden. He vigorously promoted the cause of teaching genetics in the University, retiring in 1971 and remaining in Oxford where he continued to study and publish prolifically until his death in 1981.
Darlingtons legacy is that he was the worlds leading expert on chromosomes of his time and one of the leading biological thinkers of the twentieth century. He sought to answer natures biggest biological questions such as how species arise and how variation occurs. Often suffering rebuke, isolation, and obscurity along the way, he lived through Nazi atrocities, the Cold War, the molecular revolution, eugenics, the Lysenko controversy, the Civil Rights movement, the formation of the welfare state and the differing social views of...