Frank Engledow

Sir Frank Leonard Engledow (20 August 1890 – 3 July 1985) was a British agricultural botanist who carried out research at the Plant Breeding Institute at the University of Cambridge from 1919 onwards. He was a fellow of St John's College (1919–1985), Cambridge, and held the positions of University Lecturer in Agriculture (1926–1930) and Drapers Professor of Agriculture (1930–1957) at Cambridge, where he directed the School of Agriculture from 1930 to 1957. Engledow advised the British government on agricultural production in the (former) colonies as well as in the homeland from 1927 to 1962. He continued to publish on agricultural practices and teaching after his retirement.

Education

Engledow was born in Deptford, Kent, the fifth and youngest child of Henry Engledow, a police sergeant and, after his retirement, agent of Bexleyheath Brewery and Elizabeth Prentice. Frank was educated at Dartford Grammar School, from where he went to University College London to study pure and applied mathematics and physics on a one-year scholarship. He won College Prizes in these subjects and obtained a year later a BSc externally. He was then admitted to St John's College, Cambridge, where he was more interested in the application of mathematics than in the theory which he was supposed to be studying. He was, however, allowed to change to study botany, zoology and geology and earned a First in Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1912, the award of a Slater Studentship of the College and, later, a Research Scholarship of the Ministry of Agriculture.

He had been accepted as assistant by R.H. Biffen, who had been appointed in 1908 as the first Professor of Agricultural Botany and became the first Director of the newly founded Plant Breeding Institute in 1912.