Nicholas Harberd

Nicholas Harberd
FRS
Born
Nicholas Paul Harberd

(1956-07-15) 15 July 1956 (age 68)
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge (MA, PhD)
Known forSeed to Seed: The Secret Life of Plants[2]
Scientific career
FieldsPlant biology[1]
Institutions
ThesisA genetical investigation of the alcohol dehydrogenase in barley (1981)
Websitewww.biology.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-nicholas-harberd-frs Edit this at Wikidata

Nicholas Paul Harberd FRS (born 15 July 1956)[3] is Sibthorpian Professor of Plant Science and former head of the Department of Plant Sciences (since 2022 part of the Department of Biology) at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford.[4][5][1][6]

Education

Harberd earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours, a Master of Arts, and PhD in 1981, from the University of Cambridge where he was a student of Christ's College, Cambridge.

Career and research

He was a scientist at the Plant Breeding Institute, Trumpington, Cambridge from 1982 to 1986, and the University of California, Berkeley, from 1986 to 1988.

He is head of the Harberd group, which was located at John Innes Centre, and has been at the University of Oxford[7] since his appointment as Sibthorpian Professor of Plant Sciences in 2007.[2][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]

With George Coupland, Liam Dolan, Alison Smith, Jonathan Jones, Cathie Martin, Robert Sablowski and Abigail Amey he is a co-author of the textbook Plant Biology.[16]

Awards and honours

Harberd was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2009.[8] His nomination reads:

Nick Harberd has made pioneering contributions to the solution of a fundamental problem in biology – the molecular mechanisms via which plant hormones control growth. He showed that the hormone gibberellin promotes growth by counteracting a family of nuclear growth-repressing proteins, and that this provides a key mechanism for adaptive regulation of growth in response to environmental change. He also showed how this mechanism underlies the action of genes responsible for the increase in yield of wheat varieties during the 'green revolution'. His discoveries have thus provided many important and original contributions to developmental, evolutionary and agricultural science.[17]

References

  1. ^ a b Nicholas Harberd publications indexed by Google Scholar Edit this at Wikidata
  2. ^ a b Harberd, Nicholas (2006). Seed to Seed: The Secret Life of Plants. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7475-7039-4.
  3. ^ Anon (2017). "Harberd, Prof. Nicholas Paul". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U245781. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. ^ "Prof Nicholas Harberd, Sibthorpian Professor of Plant Science and Fellow of St. John's College". University of Oxford. 24 September 2009. Archived from the original on 29 August 2010. Retrieved 27 February 2012.
  5. ^ Nicholas Harberd publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  6. ^ Nicholas Harberd publications from Europe PubMed Central
  7. ^ "Plant Sciences Staff: Prof. NP Harberd". University of Oxford. December 2011. Retrieved 27 February 2012.
  8. ^ a b "New Royal Society Fellows". University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 2 December 2012. Retrieved 9 March 2012.
  9. ^ Colin Tudge (24 March 2006). "Genes by the wayside". The Guardian.
  10. ^ Harberd, N. P.; Peng, J.; Richards, D. E.; Hartley, N. M.; Murphy, G. P.; Devos, K. M.; Flintham, J. E.; Beales, J.; Fish, L. J.; Worland, A. J.; Pelica, F.; Sudhakar, D.; Christou, P.; Snape, J. W.; Gale, M. D. (1999). "'Green revolution' genes encode mutant gibberellin response modulators". Nature. 400 (6741): 256–61. Bibcode:1999Natur.400..256P. doi:10.1038/22307. PMID 10421366. S2CID 4363793.
  11. ^ Fu, X.; Harberd, N. P. (2003). "Auxin promotes Arabidopsis root growth by modulating gibberellin response". Nature. 421 (6924): 740–3. Bibcode:2003Natur.421..740F. doi:10.1038/nature01387. PMID 12610625. S2CID 2719281.
  12. ^ Peng, J.; Carol, P.; Richards, D. E.; King, K. E.; Cowling, R. J.; Murphy, G. P.; Harberd, N. P. (1997). "The Arabidopsis GAI gene defines a signaling pathway that negatively regulates gibberellin responses". Genes & Development. 11 (23): 3194–205. doi:10.1101/gad.11.23.3194. PMC 316750. PMID 9389651.
  13. ^ Achard, P.; Cheng, H; De Grauwe, L; Decat, J; Schoutteten, H; Moritz, T; Van Der Straeten, D; Peng, J; Harberd, N. P. (2006). "Integration of Plant Responses to Environmentally Activated Phytohormonal Signals". Science. 311 (5757): 91–4. Bibcode:2006Sci...311...91A. doi:10.1126/science.1118642. PMID 16400150. S2CID 32781916.
  14. ^ Achard, P.; Herr, A; Baulcombe, D. C.; Harberd, N. P. (2004). "Modulation of floral development by a gibberellin-regulated microRNA". Development. 131 (14): 3357–65. doi:10.1242/dev.01206. PMID 15226253.
  15. ^ "Professor Nick Harberd elected Fellow of the Royal Society". jic.ac.uk. Retrieved 26 September 2018.
  16. ^ Smith, Alison Mary; Coupand, George; Dolan, Liam; Harberd, Nicholas; Jones, Jonathan; Martin, Cathie; Sablowski, Robert; Amey, Abigail (2009). Plant Biology. Garland Science. ISBN 978-0815340256.
  17. ^ "EC/2009/16: Harberd, Nicholas Paul". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 20 June 2014.