Frederick Gugenheim Gregory

Who was Frederick Gugenheim Gregory?

Frederick Gugenheim Gregory was a British botanist, plant physiologist and winner of the Royal Medal.

He was born Fritz Gugenheim in London, but changed his name as a result of the anti-German sentiment during the First World War, which culminated in the destruction of his laboratory notebooks by colleagues at the Cheshunt Experimental Station. He first studied at Dame Alice Owen's School, where he was persuaded by the school science master, G. A. Armitage that he should go into science, despite his artistic skills. He left the school at the top of his class with a number of prizes and passed the intermediate exam for the University of London in mathematics, physics, chemistry and mechanics in 1912, gaining acceptance into Imperial College London.

His intention when applying had been to study chemistry, but after attending a lecture by John Bretland Farmer he switched to botany, gaining his ARCS in 1914 and BSc in 1915, both with first class honours, and also won the Forbes prize. Having been exempted from service in World War I he gained his DIC in 1917, and followed this up with an MSc in 1920 and the DSc in 1921. By this point he had joined the Research Institute in Plant Physiology at the university, and began investigating the physiology of greenhouse crops at the Cheshunt Experimental Station. While there he noticed differences in how a plant grew at different times in the year but under a constant temperature, and attempted to express this in mathematical terms using very speculative evidence; the resulting arguments made him prominent within the field.