Francis Albert Eley Crew

Francis Albert Eley Crew FRS FRSE LLD (2 March 1886 – 26 May 1973) was an English animal geneticist. He was a pioneer in his field leading to Edinburgh’s place as a world leader in the science of animal genetics. He was the first Director of the Institute of Animal Breeding and the first Professor of Animal Genetics. He is said to have laid the foundations of medical genetics.

He was born in Tipton in England on 2 March 1886 the only surviving son of Thomas Crew, a grocer. He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and the High School in Birmingham. From an early age he took an interest in breeding bantam chickens, and won prizes at local shows. He won a place studying Medicine at Edinburgh University, studying under Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire and Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer, and graduating MB ChB in 1912.

In the First World War he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, rising to the rank of Major. He was on active service with the 3rd Field Ambulance Service in France. Prof Alan William Greenwood ran the Institute during Crew’s wartime absence.

In 1920 Sharpey-Schafer approached him, asking him to run the newly created animal breeding research station in Edinburgh. This was originally housed at High School Yards but quickly found a new home at King's Buildings in 1924, there linking to the Chemistry Department. His staff at the Institute was highly illustrious: including John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Lancelot Hogben, Julian Huxley, Bertold Paul Wiesner and (as a postgraduate) Honor Fell. At this time the UK’s first Pregnancy Diagnosis Laboratory was also set up under Crew as a tangential area of public benefit, linked to their research. In the 1930s their staff were boosted by scientists from Germany and Italy including Hermann Joseph Muller, Charlotte Auerbach and Guido Pontecorvo.

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