Annakkili Amma Research Institute (AARI)

 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 phytoplankt...

 Peter Stanley Dixon      Peter Stanley Dixon was born in Redcar, England on 29 November 1928. He was the only child of William Stanley and Nellie Dixon. He came from a poor family and completed his entire education with the help of various scholarships. He continued his education at the University of Manchester from where he received a B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. Here he developed a strong foundation in what was then widely referred to as cryptogamic botany. However, upon completing his B.Sc., he turned his attention towards a group of organisms (Red Algae), that would dominate the rest of his life. His MSc thesis was on cytology and reproduction in freshwater red alga Lemanea . This has set the stage for further graduate work under the able mentorship of Kathleen M. Drew-Baker. He chooses to work on Gelidium and its relatives, a red algal group notorious for its taxonomic difficulty.            In 1954 he began his academic career...

     Dr Mary Winifred Parke was the guiding force of British Phycology from 1950-70, was born on  23 March 1908 at Liverpool (England). She came under the influence of Dr. Margery Knight and started studying marine algae from 1930 onwards. Both were extremely hard workers and wrote 'Manx Algae' in 1931. This was not just the flora of Port Erin but the account of distribution, life-history, ecology, and developmental biology, all these branches were in their infancy at that time in phycological research.        Her richest contribution "culture of flagellates of phycoplanktons' came because of Prof. Orton who was working on artificial rearing of oysters. He entrusted Mary with isolating and culturing the best suitable food source. Her efforts succeeded in isolating and developing six organisms one of which Isochrysis galbana later became the most important food source in mariculture.       Mary was appointed as Botanist at Plymo...