Scientist of the Week August 2021
Prof. Joanna M. Kain
Prof. Joanna M. Kain was a New Zealand-born British Phycologist. She was born in 1930 to an English mother and a Kiwi father and moved to London at the age of 2 and spent most of her life in the UK. Her father named her Dorothy Kain, which her mother never liked, and thus re-named her as Joanna - after her favorite doll - by this name she was known to the Phycologist world over, Joanna Jones (Kain).
Although her early education was disrupted with moves to 10 different schools, she eventually made it to University College London in 1949, where she became attracted to seaweeds under the influence of Prof. G E Fogg. Her undergraduate research project was on patterns of intertidal zonation around the Isle of Wight. She was particularly interested in intertidal ecology, but the Institute of Seaweed Research, offered her a research problem to investigate the growth of marine phytoplankton, which she accepted and completed her Ph.D. at UCL under the supervision of Prof. Fogg in 1957. While pursuing her Ph.D., she was appointed as an ‘Algologist’ at Port Erin Marine Laboratory, the University of Liverpool in 1956. She remained there for the next 44 years. Here at Port Erin she first met Norman Jones, whom she later married at the age of 32 and had two children, Martin and Bidda.
She enjoyed the huge freedom and privilege of not having any undergraduate teaching obligations for the first 16 years of her academic career and thus devote herself solely to research. Nevertheless, from 1972, she was involved in teaching and the student numbers increased from 9 to over 30 per year during her time, increasing her access to potential Ph.D. students. She successfully supervised 18 Ph.D. students during this tenure, many of whom have gone on to become important phycologists in their own right.
She was an early adopter of scuba diving and a pioneer of subtidal research application from this skill. She was one of the first women to qualify as a first-class diver, which initially involved diving solo on a line until she later found a buddy in her husband Norman and then subsequently the Chief Diver at Port Erin Marine Laboratory, Mike Bates, kept her insight. She was so into diving and research that she even had a special maternity wetsuit made so she could continue her work when she was pregnant with her daughter Bidda! Her first 20 years or so (until ~ 1980) research donning the scuba gear to uncover the secrets of Laminaria hyperborea, the dominant kelp at Port Erin. Her research examined the growth and survivorship of gametophytes and sporophytes of this species, and the various influences of light, depth, latitude, grazing, competition, and anthropogenic pollutants. She then switched her research focus during the next two decades, understanding the phenology of a few key species. For example, she was fascinated to discover that the critical length of the photoperiod that controlled the phenology of Delesseria differed with the life-history phase.
She published 61 papers during her working life and then a further 19 following her official retirement in 1991. Her last paper was published in 2015 and presented at the Australasian Society for Phycology and Aquatic Botany conference in Hobart. Her review "A review of the life history, reproduction, and phenology of Gracilaria" which she wrote with Christophe Destombe in the Journal of Applied Phycology in 1995 was one of the highly cited articles till today.
She was a passionate and active phycologist and gave generously to her discipline. She joined the British Phycological Society as a student, attended a total of 44 annual meetings over 47 years, and was Honorary Secretary for 7 years from 1977, Vice President, then President 1985–88, and Honorary Fellow from 2000. She was extraordinarily organized and practical, but once she had considered the options and then decided on the way to do something, one would be hard-pressed to get her to change her mind.
She was diagnosed with terminal oesophageal cancer in 2015. She died peacefully in her home in Canberra on Friday, 21 July 2017 at the age of 87, with her reading glasses on and her iPad by her side. She decided it was time to go, so she did. Joanna was passionate, dedicated, scrupulous, engaged, committed, analytical, independent, witty, argumentative, shy, and organized. She was an amazing role model of a practicing scientist and a mentor for phycologists of several generations.
She’d had a good life and contributed immensely to Phycology.
Data compiled by: Dr. Vaibhav A. Mantri, Principal Scientist & Divisional Chair, CSIR-CSMCRI, Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India.
Source Credit: Journal of Applied Phycology 19 October 2017
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