Henry Harris (scientist)
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Henry Harris FRS, FAA |
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|---|---|
| Born |
28 January 1925 Russia |
| Died | 31 October 2014 (aged 89) |
| Fields | biology |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | Nature of chemical stimuli affecting cells during tissue injury (1953) |
| Doctoral students | Fiona Watt |
| Notable awards | Royal Medal |
Sir Henry Harris, FRS, FAA (28 January 1925 – 31 October 2014) was an Australian professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, who led pioneering work on cancer and human genetics in the 1960s.
Harris was born in Russia in 1925 to a Jewish family. In 1929 the family emigrated to Australia. Educated at Sydney Boys High School from 1937 to 1941, he first read modern languages in 1941, but was subsequently attracted to medicine through his literary interests. He studied medicine at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and began a career in medical research rather than clinical practice.
In the early 1950s, Harris moved to England to study at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford under Howard Florey. He completed his DPhil in 1954 and settled down to a career of academic research. In 1960 he was appointed as head of the new department of cell biology at the John Innes Institute, and in 1964 he succeeded Florey as Head of the Dunn School, and in 1979 he was appointed as Oxford's Regius Professor of Medicine succeeding Sir Richard Doll.
Harris's research interests were primarily focused on cancer cells and of their differences from normal cells, and later on the possibilities of genetic modification of human cell lines with material of other species in order to increase the range of genetic markers. Harris and his colleagues developed some of the basic techniques for investigating and measuring genes along the human chromosome.
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