Jeffrey Harborne

Jeffrey Barry Harborne FRS (1 September 1928, in Bristol – 21 July 2002) was a British chemist who specialised in . He was Professor of Botany at the University of Reading, 1976–93, then Professor emeritus. He contributed to more than 40 books and 270 research papers and was a pioneer in ecological biochemistry, particularly in the complex chemical interactions between plants, microbes and insects.

Harborne was educated at Wycliffe College, Stonehouse, Gloucestershire and the University of Bristol, where he graduated in chemistry in 1949. He earned a Ph.D. in 1953 with a thesis on the naturally occurring oxygen heterocyclic compounds with Professor Wilson Baker (1900–2002).

Between 1953 and 1955 he worked as a postdoc with Professor Theodore Albert Geissman in the phenolic plant pigments, including anthocyanins. The identification of these substances, he made use of UV / VIS spectroscopy.

Between 1965 and 1968 Harborne worked as a research assistant at the University of Liverpool. After this, he worked with Vernon Heywood at the University of Reading. Harborne was associate professor and research assistant in the Department of Botany. In 1976 he became professor. Between 1987 and 1993 he was head of the Department of Botany. In 1993 he retired. He had in his tenure at the University of Reading also positions as visiting professor at the University Federal do Rio de Janeiro (1973), the University of Texas at Austin (1976), the University of California at Santa Barbara (1977) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1981).

Harborne investigated the role of flavonoids in interactions between plants and insects. He also investigated the relationship between anthocyanins and the ecology of pollination. He also studied the role of phytoalexins in members of the Fabaceae family (Leguminosae), the rose family (Rosaceae) and the display of flowers family (Umbelliferae). He has published on chemotaxonomy as in his research articles on the prevention of anthocyanins, flavones and auron in the primrose family (Primulaceae) in snapdragons (Antirrhinum) and a number of other plants. He also published on isoflavones and chemical ecology.

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