Roy Johnson

We never expected it to happen the way it did. Looking back, the first sign was probably Roy – the accomplished pianist – saying there was something about his little finger that wouldn’t strike the keys properly. It was the earliest stages of motor neurone disease, which advanced steadily, and later rapidly, until Roy succumbed on 24 July 2002, peacefully and in his sleep. Roy the pianist was also Roy the scientist, Roy the plant pathologist, Roy the traveller, Roy the cook, Roy of the musical sketches, Roy the tennis player, Roy the academic, Roy who appreciated good food and drink, Roy who loved music and other good things, Roy the gardener, Roy the cyclist, Roy the talker … Roy who was also the friend to so many, and we are deeply sad that he has left us so soon. Our discipline of plant pathology has lost a true leader of original thought. He was the one who talked to his friend David Bowyer, a medical pathologist, about the elusive concept of a desirable quality of disease resistance that had been variously characterized as horizontal, multigene, field, partial, adult-plant, and other things that were meant to describe the good quality but did not always add clarity to the concept. The issue was substantially resolved after Roy described the way he saw the quality: the resistance he sought was resistance that was effective for a number of years before it broke down. David innocently suggested that the desirable quality of resistance was that it should endure. Thus in 1971 Roy coined the term ‘durable resistance’ (Johnson & Law, 1973) which was to pass into the vocabulary of plant pathology. After the event it seems too obvious to be important, but like many good ideas it took a keen insight to be the first to perceive the obvious. Roy's own analysis is reproduced here.* Roy's insight into plant pathology came first from a keen interest in plants and their cultivation. He studied horticultural botany at the University of Reading, and used to entertain his colleagues with stories of Hugh Bunting, Douglas Snow and others who influenced his student days. His PhD was from the University of Saskatoon. Under the supervision of Doug Knott he studied the cytogenetic basis of rust resistance in wheat, providing a key foundation for his understanding of host–pathogen genetics throughout his life. Roy returned to Britain in 1965 and joined Martin Wolfe in Dick Macer's pathology section at the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge. The institution changed around him over the years, while Roy remained the cereal rust specialist to the end. Right through to his retirement and then his death he remained a fount of detailed knowledge of the genetics of host–parasite interactions. Close colleagues like Bob McIntosh in New South Wales and Jesse Dubin, then in Mexico, with whom he enjoyed sharing his understanding, will surely agree that our discipline has lost irreplaceably a plant pathologist whose experience and insight enabled him to make wise judgements about the practical implications of host and pathogen genetics. His early days at PBI were influenced by its dynamic director, Douglas Bell, originally a barley breeder who was eager to build up a family of scientists who would apply research to the benefit of UK farming. With Harold Wilson as prime minister in the 1960s, Dr Bell could reflect some of the ‘white heat of technology’ that was a political catchphrase of the time, and the PBI thrived and grew. Roy and his colleagues Martin Wolfe and Peter Scott formed the team of pathologists within this family and they worked closely together, and with the cereal breeders at PBI, over more than two decades. Roy's immediate team, led by Alan Taylor, was a key to the output of the programme, which was at the exact interface of theory and practice, of genetics and plant breeding. In the 1980s, with Margaret Thatcher as prime minister, the very success of the PBI as a science-based producer of wealth to the agricultural industry pointed the way to its own privatization, with the more fundamental elements of its programme to remain in the public sector. An arbitrary line was drawn that split the pathology programme to either side. Roy's work was placed initially on the breeding side of this divide. While this may have had some justification, he later transferred to the Institute of Plant Science Research in Norwich. Roy was probably never so comfortable in the remainder of his career, being slightly separated from that distinctive interface between theory and practice which is so fundamental to success in plant pathology. Roy had been close to the foundation of the British Society for Plant Pathology, in 1980, and could tell more stories than most about its improbably late birth, which he would attribute accurately to parental disputes and other minor dramas. Of course, he was to become its distinguished President in 1991, and later an Honorary Member. His 1992 presidential address appears in Plant Pathology41, 239–254, entitled ‘Reflections of a plant pathologist on breeding for resistance, with emphasis on yellow rust and eyespot of wheat’. His election as Honorary Member is recognized in Plant Pathology50, 419 (2001). In 2000 he became a Medallist of the British Crop Protection Council. It must say something of the working relationships at the PBI that his friends Martin and Peter each did just as Roy did in these respects. Roy's own account of these events can be found in BSPP News38, Spring 2001, which is at http://www.bspp.org.uk/bsppnews/bsppnews38/bsppnews38-3.htm. Roy was a long-time supporter of the Cambridge Mycology and Plant Pathology Club, and was its President for two separate terms. In his retirement, since 1995, Roy remained – unsurprisingly – in keen demand from those who wanted to benefit from his insight and experience in plant pathology. He became Senior Editor of Plant Pathology from 1995 to 2000, assisted by another PBI colleague, Fiona Bennett. He travelled widely throughout the world, always with the focus on the cereal rusts, and enjoyed telling his friends of the strange events and, sometimes, people he encountered. He published a personal account of his retirement in BSPP News41, Spring 2002, in which he also refers to the early stages of his illness. It includes this poignant observation: ‘My overall impression of being nominally retired is that I could continue to work, very continuously, in my chosen field of science for as long as I felt able.’ It can be found at: http://www.bspp.org.uk/bsppnews/bsppnews41/bsppnews41g.htm. Roy is going to be very much missed by his professional colleagues, by the many people he influenced, and particularly by his huge circle of friends. Actually, his style was such that there was usually little to distinguish these three groups. And Roy will be missed for so many of the familiar and unexpected aspects of his personality. At his funeral, some of these were captured in the humanist form of ceremony: Roy believed that life was to be lived and then came naturally to an end, with nothing further except what each person leaves behind. He would have loved the playing of Percy Grainger's ‘In an English Country Garden’, which he had entertained so many with at his own piano. He would have wanted to include many more pieces of music, if a funeral could last a day! And he would have smiled at the re-telling of the story of his grasp of cookery, including its science, which led him with characteristic honesty to correct those who had written in a Christmas edition of Nature about how Sauce Béarnaise may be recovered from curdling! Roy was usually right on matters of fact, and characteristically to be relied on over matters of judgment, insight and friendship. This is a small tribute from his friends to someone they are greatly missing.

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