Thomas H. Jukes

Who was Thomas H. Jukes?

Thomas Hughes Jukes was a British-American biologist known for his work in nutrition, molecular evolution, and for his public engagement with controversial scientific issues, including DDT, vitamin C and creationism. He was the co-author, with Jack Lester King, of the 1969 Science article "Non-Darwinian Evolution" which, along with Motoo Kimura's earlier publication, was the origin of the neutral theory of molecular evolution.

Jukes was born in Hastings, England, but moved to Toronto in 1924. In 1933, he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Toronto. He spent the next decade in the University of California system, first as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, then as Instructor and Assistant Professor at UC Davis. At Davis, he helped determine the relationships among the B complex vitamins through experiments on chickens. He then left academia to work for American Cyanamid's Lederle Laboratories, where he helped established that folic acid is a vitamin and discovered that feeding livestock a continual supply of antibiotics significantly enhances growth.

Following the rise of molecular biology, Jukes returned to UC Berkeley, where he spent the rest of his career.