Prize for scientist

Press, 30 March 1981, Page 10

Prize for scientist

KEN COATES

From

in London

Dr C. R. Slack, the Deputy Director of the Plant Physiology Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Palmerston North, will receive £20.000 (about $50,000) from the Rank Prize Funds for outstanding research work into photosynthesis in plants. He is one of three plant biochemists who will share a prize of £60.000.

The others are Dr H. P. Kortschak, of the University of Hawaii, whose work has mainly been on sugar cane, and Dr M. D. Hatch, of the

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Canberra. Dr Slack, aged 44, Man-chester-born and a graduate of Nottingham University, was the principal collaborator with Dr Hatch in extending original observations made by Dr Kortschak. The Rank Prize Funds, which were instituted by ■ Lord Rank shortly before he died in 1972. were endowed with £2.5 million from the J. Arthur Rank Group Charity (now the Rank Foundation) divided between research into nutrition and opto-elec-tronics.

From 1962 to 1970 Dr Slack worked at the Colonial; Sugar Refining Company’s Research Centre in Brisbane.; He and Dr Hatch carried out: research leading to the de-; .scription of the photosyn- ! thetic pathway in sugar cane and other .tropical species, i Their discoveries stimu--lated a whole new field of physiological and biochemi-; cal research that led to im-.-portant advances in the cul-: tivation of protected crops. ! Dr Slack is now investigat-' ing lipid metabolism inj plants and the grain quality j of malting barley and bread wheat.