Professor David Lewis
This piece is reproduced with the kind permission of Prof. David Read. We also encourage you to visit Prof. Tim Birkhead's tribute to David Lewis in The Guardian.
David Lewis died on October 2022 after a long and brave battle with Parkinson’s Disease. He was a bright light in so many of our lives for so long. I had the pleasure of hisfriendship and support for 57 years and would like to take this opportunity to reflect upon his contributions, first to our Department, to the wider University, and beyond, through those years.
The Department
David came to Sheffield from Oxford in 1966 where he had completed his PhD, and in the company of a newly appointed Professor, J.L. Harley FRS, who had been his doctoral supervisor. Harley was a somewhat austere figure who, initially at least, showed no inclination to mix with us either socially or academically. Our fears that David might be of a similar inclination rapidly disappeared: he was a jovial and communicative colleague.
Having been Lecturer (1966-73), Senior Lecturer (1973-83) and Reader (1976-83), David was awarded a Personal Chair in Plant Sciences in 1983. By 1987 he was head of the Botany Department. Across the UK these were turbulent times in academia. There was a sense amongst Government that small departments — like Sheffield’s Botany, and its neighbour, Zoology — were ‘inefficient’. Coerced by the University, Botany and Zoology merged in 1988 to form the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences (APS).
By universal acclaim, David was elected its Chairman —a post he held for seven successful years (1988-95). His exceptional talents as a leader were recognised, not just by his botanical colleagues but also by the zoologists. Cheerful, even-handed and thoughtful, David’s approach created a department with few equals in the UK — a department whose foundation was collegiality and academic excellence. Hugely respected within the University, the quality of David’s leadership became more widely known when APS came either at, or close to the top of two national Research Assessment Exercises (RAEs – predecessor to the REF).
David set the APS ship on a course that fostered great science. His successors, Malcolm Press, Lorraine Maltby, Mike Siva-Jothy and John Lee, all benefitted from the firm foundation that David had created. David was assisted for some time by a supportive and affable personal assistant, Jane Ralston (née Bird) who some in APS affectionately referred to as ‘the Head of Department’!
The University
While David was head APS, the Vice Chancellor was Professor Gareth Roberts, who like David, was proud of his Welsh roots. Roberts clearly recognised the talents of his fellow-countryman and appointed him Pro-Vice-Chancellor with special responsibility for research for the period 1995-1999. Amongst David’s many responsibilities over this time were the Chairmanship of thirteen major university committees. Of these, three merit recognition here. The first being that of The IT Strategy Committee. This appointment amused David. As he modestly observed to me at the time, ‘I must be the only person who has never either owned or operated a computer, ever to be appointed member, let alone chair, of such a committee. He retained that position for several years which probably testifies to his versatility and the speed with which he could master new technologies. His chairmanship of the University Estates Budget Group led him into the battle then raging (but sadly, subsequently lost) over the proposed introduction of car parking charges on campus. Clark Kerr (then President of all the Universities of California) once said that ‘University Academics are a disparate group of individuals united by a common grievance about car parking’; and one can again see that David had been handed ‘a poison chalice’.! Finally, when the University Grants Committee, dictated that the University should close the Geology Department, David was placed in charge of the extremely difficult ‘winding down’ procedure. He was successful in retaining, for the staff of APS, a strong environmental geologist, Charles Wellman.
Research
In the course of completing his DPhil studies at Oxford University where he worked under the supervision of Professor JL Harley FRS, David exposed the critical metabolic pathway that enables mycorrhizal fungi to continuously sequester the ‘sugars’ acquired from their plant partners. Using the roots of beech (Fagus sylvatica) as his model system, David showed that the fungi were able to absorb the simple sugars, glucose, and fructose, which were photosynthetically synthesised by the plants, and convert them to sugar alcohols, mannitol and arabitol, and the disaccharide trehalose. This sequestration thereby created a concentration gradient down which photosynthate continuously flowed to the fungus.
At the same time, collaborating with David Smith (later Professor Sir David Smith FRS), in an adjacent laboratory, he showed that comparable movements and transformations of sugars formed the basis of successful partnerships between symbiotic autotrophs and heterotrophs in organisms as diverse as lichens and hermatypic corals. The critical metabolic pathways were elucidated by the laborious and now largely obsolete procedure of liquid paper chromatography in which extracted sugars were resolved using organic solvents that are both highly volatile and carcinogenic; such methods are no longer in use today! David was also a co-author of important reviews on the distribution, physiology and metabolism of sugar alcohols in fungi and green plants, and on carbohydrate movement in parasitic and mutualistic symbioses.
On reaching Sheffield, David continued his work on the relationships between fungi and higher plants with a focus on sugar metabolism in plants affected by rust disease. By this time much improved methods were available, in particular gas-liquid and thin layer chromatography. Excellent technical assistance allowed David to give more time to teaching and administrative work; in this role the support of Mrs E McGee, affectionately known as Mrs Mac, was especially valuable for introducing new research students to life at the bench. David still found time to review ideas about fungal nutrition and the origin of biotrophy. Throughout this time David, using his good understanding of plant taxonomy and ecology, was able to apply his knowledge of carbohydrate distributions to the discipline of chemotaxonomy. A good example was showing in a series of papers that the characterisation of the discrete sugar moieties in liverworts could be used as a effectively as any morphological feature to separate individual taxa.
External Activities
In addition to being a practicing scientist David played key roles in the communication, globally, of plant science. He was a long-serving Editor (1970-83) and Executive Editor (1983-95) of the well-known plant science journal New Phytologist. Over this long period, he contributed significantly to raising the journal’s profile, from a strong national level to that of a leading international force. This transition was achieved while preserving the essential nature of the journal as a home for the best science across the spectrum of botany. David’s dedication was shown at all levels. He paid particular attention, especially for the benefit of younger contributors, to the detail of manuscripts - often into the early hours of the morning! He was also a prolific contributor to the journal - his last paper published as recently as in 2020. The paper dealt with what, to plant scientists, is the vexed question of the role (or lack of role) of boron in plant nutrition. This topic was also one that was close to the heart of a much-missed Welsh colleague and friend in the Department, Bernie Jarvis. David dedicated the paper to Bernie, who had sadly pre-deceased him. This last paper of David’s elicited this response from an internationally recognised doyen of boron research: 'We have to thank you for stirring up the boron community and for initiating a new era of boron research'.
There was even a commercial venture. With colleagues Bernie Jarvis and Trevor Elkington, David set up the company 'SupaPlants'. Together, they developed a technique enabling small house plants to be grown in a sealed transparent container through which the plants growth - shoot and roots - could be observed. The plants required no watering and grew in a secretly formulated, transparent gel. This ingenious invention excited great interest, particularly among supermarkets. Sadly, they required the repeated guaranteed delivery of millions of units — a step too far for our budding entrepreneurs.
David was a much-valued Trustee of the Sheffield Botanical Gardens Trust. His efforts helped to secure the Trust a very large investment from the National Lottery Fund, which enabled the Garden’s rejuvenation, and they are now a much-loved Sheffield resource.
Ever since his DPhil, David was passionate about fungi. He was a long-standing member of the British Mycological Society and served as its President in 1989. This interest he shared with his wife Diana, and they were frequent attendees of fungus forays. Together, David and Diana established a small arboretum in a field behind their home Grange Cottage, in Grindleford. This consisted of over twenty species of native trees and shrubs. This is now flourishing and will be one of their legacies for the future.
David leaves behind his loving wife Diana, who did so much to sustain him through his very difficult illness, his daughter Katie, who teaches children with special needs and son Tom, who is a senior ranger for the Peak National Park.
David Lewis was an exceptional person, academic and colleague. His extraordinary talents touched and improved the lives of so many of us. Even those in the new Department who never knew him should be grateful for his legacy.
I thank Tim Birkhead, Alastair Fitter, Patrick Holligan, Diana Lewis and Chris Read for assistance in writing this encomium.
David Read
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