Name Joseph Smartt | ||
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Books Grain legumes, Tropical pulses | ||
Joseph ("Joe") Smartt (born in West Ham, London, on 9 September 1931; died in Hedge End, South Hampshire, on 7 June 2013), was a British geneticist with major contributions to the knowledge of crop evolution, especially of grain legumes.
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Education and early professional life
He received his primary education at the Forest Gate primary school. Smartt obtained his BSc from Durham University, before taking a diploma in tropical agriculture from Cambridge University. Afterwards, he went to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), where he worked on groundnuts. He completed his PhD in the Department of Genetics at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in 1965. His thesis was on "Cross-compatibility relationships between the cultivated peanut Arachis hypogaea L. and other species of the genus Arachis".
Professional life
He worked in plant breeding programs in Africa. After returning to England, he was employed by the Department of Botany of Southampton University from 1967 to 1996. Initially, he was a Lecturer in Genetics, while achieving the status of Reader in Biology in 1990. Southampton University honoured Smartt by awarding him a Doctor of Science (DSc) in 1989 for his work on the genetics and evolution of crop plants.
Smartt authored two books on grain legumes, edited a major volume on groundnuts, and was invited to co-edit a second edition of the important Evolution of Crop Plants with the late Professor Norman Simmonds.