After his Commonwealth Fund Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley (1950–1957), Ronald Wood returned to Imperial College and later became the leader of the largest research group in plant pathology in Commonwealth universities. His main group of doctoral students in the United Kingdom and 15 other countries focused on pathogenesis, resistance and specificity in soft rots, leaf spots and vascular wilt diseases. Another group worked on biological control of plant disease and resistance to fungicides.
In the late 1960s, he proposed and then was Secretary of the first International Congress of Plant Pathology. At the Congress, he was elected founder President of the International Society of Plant Pathology and later was the first Honorary Member. He was Director of three NATO Advanced Study Institutes on toxins, resistance and specificity in plant diseases, and edited the proceedings.
Ronald’s book Physiological Plant Pathology (1967) was the first major English-language text on the subject.
Professor Ronald Wood FRS died on 26 April 2017.
Professional position
- Plant Pathology Senior Reserach Fellow, Imperial College London
Subject groups
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Earth and Environmental Sciences
Agricultural and forest science
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Patterns in Populations
Mycology, Plant sciences / botany
