Karl Sax

Karl Sax (November 2 1892 - October 8 1973) was an American botanist and geneticist, in particular he was noted for his research in cytogenetics and the effect of radiation on chromosomes.

Sax was born in Spokane, Washington, his parents were pioneer farmers, and active in civic affairs, his father was mayor of Colville, Washington. He was schooled in Colville and went on to study at Washington State College in 1912. He majored in agriculture, his decision to undertake graduate study was influenced by plant breeder Edward Gaines. At college he also met and married Dr. Hally Jolivette, his cytology teacher; they had three sons. In 1916 following his graduation, his wife accepted a position at Wellesley College and he went with her to the East Coast enrolling in the doctoral program at Harvard's Bussey Institution Graduate School of Applied Biology. He completed his MA in 1917 and served as a Private in the US Army in 1917 - 1918.

After his war service he was employed as an instructor at the Department of Genetics at the University of California, Berkeley where he worked with E. B. Babcock on the genetics of the genus Crepis. In 1920 he took an appointment at the Riverbank Laboratories in Geneva, Illinois working on wheat genetics, but he moved on from that job soon after when he took a position at Maine Agricultural Experiment Station in Orono. During this period he was also undertaking his doctoral dissertation through Harvard, receiving his D.Sc. in 1922. In 1928 he left Orono to take up a position at the Harvard. When he arrived the Bussey department was dissolved, and he taught cytology at the Biological Laboratories in Cambridge.

In 1938 he published a paper entitled "Chromosome Aberrations Induced by X-rays," which demonstrated that radiation could induce major genetic changes by affecting chromosomal rearrangements. The paper is thought to mark the beginning of the field of radiation cytology, and led him to be called the "father of radiation cytology". He also bred new varieties of ornamental trees and shrubs from apples, crabapples, magnolias, and forsythias including a cross between Prunus subhirtella and P. apetela which he named in honor of his wife and a cultivar of Forsythia berd by Sax was named "Karl Sax" by nurserymen. In 1946 he was appointed acting director of the Arnold Arboretum; in 1947 he became the director - a post he held until 1954.

Sax was also interested in human demography, in 1955 he wrote Standing Room Only: The Challenge to Overpopulation, on the consequences of uncontrolled human population growth. Sax became associated with Planned Parenthood and was a member of the Population Association of America. Sax was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 1959 he retired and moved to Media, Pennsylvania where he continued his work on plant breeding.

External link

 * Biographical Memoir of Karl Sax written by Carl P. Swanson and Norman H. Giles for the US National Academy of Sciences, a superb source of information about Sax and his work