Obituaries: Gerald Wiener, eminent geneticist who arrived in Britain on Kindertransport

Gerald Wiener, scientist. Born: 25 April, 1926 in Küstrin, Germany. Died: 28 September, 2023 in Inverness, aged 97

Gerald Wiener, PhD, DSc, FRSE, CIBiol, FRSB, was born on 25th April 1926 into a German Jewish family in what was then Küstrin in Germany, but is now Kostrzyn in Poland. However, he spent his early childhood in Berlin against the background of rising Nazi persecution of the Jews.

In 1939, with war approaching, he came to the UK as a 12-year old unaccompanied child as part of the ‘Kindertransport’. He was one of ten thousand such children rescued from the Nazis by this initiative, which was funded by private citizens after the UK government changed the immigration laws. Although his mother arrived in the UK a few months later on a work visa, he was brought up by a series of foster families in Oxford. He was fortunate to be introduced to Ruth and Rosemary Spooner, who recognised his abilities as a scholar and set him on the path to academic achievement. After spells in the Home Guard, and working as a farm hand at the University of Cambridge farm at Huntingdon Road, Gerald graduated in 1947 with a degree in Agriculture from the University of Edinburgh.

He was one of the first young scientists to be employed at the fledgling Animal Breeding Research Organisation (ABRO) set up in Edinburgh in the years following the Second World War. His PhD identified the pyramid structure of livestock populations, whereby genes flowed from a relatively small subset of influential herds or flocks to the wider population, and he mapped out how this structure could be used for breed improvement – an idea that has been fundamental in modern breeding. Further long-term experiments followed, concerned with quantifying nature and nurture, quantifying the genetic effects such as hybrid vigour and inbreeding, maternal effects and other influences on livestock such nutrition or management.

Gerald Weiner became a world-leading expert on the breeding and husbandry of yak

Gerald opened up new areas for genetics following a chance observation that deaths from swayback, a disease of young lambs deficient in copper, was heavily influenced by breed. This led him to the discovery that genetics strongly influenced the absorption of dietary copper between and within breeds. These ideas coalesced in the realisation that better predictions of genetic merit could come from understanding the physiology of important metabolic pathways rather than relying solely on things one can see and measure externally, such as body weight or volume of milk. These ideas may seem commonplace in today’s world, but, at that time, reading the genome sequence of DNA was still fully 30 years in the future.

During this time Gerald was a leading member of the British Society of Animal Science, and in 1959 became the first Senior Editor of its journal Animal Production, a role he maintained for more than 15 years. In recognition of his scientific achievements, Gerald became the Head of Physiological Genetics in ABRO, a department which included young scientists of note such as Roger Land and Ian Wilmut, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1970.

The ideas pursued in Gerald’s department were an important foundation for rebuilding ABRO after the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) announced a savage cut to its funding in 1981, and potential closure. The ARC were concerned with the direction of ABRO’s scientific programme, and as a senior scientist, Gerald played a major role in winning the arguments that ensured its survival. ARC asked him to become Director of the re-shaped institute, but instead he recommended Roger Land, as someone better fitted to take on the role. Gerald became Deputy Director and supported Roger in reorienting and establishing a programme that was ultimately to lead to many significant achievements – not least Dolly the Sheep.

After retirement Gerald continued to be in demand as an international consultant and did extensive development work for the FAO of the United Nations particularly in Asia. One outcome of this is that he became a world-leading expert on the breeding and husbandry of yak, which forms the cornerstone of cultures across vast areas of central Asia. These consultancies led him to write text books on yak, and on tropical animal breeding. The latter, when translated into Chinese, became the world’s most widely read book on breeding. His work is recognised in China as forming the foundation for current breeding and husbandry of yak.

Gerald’s interest in science never waned and in his final years he was determined to write the early history of ABRO. which had been such a big part of his life. He wanted to show a more complete picture of ABRO’s work, as so much of what had been published focused on the crisis of 1981, and the successes that followed after. This history of ABRO, completed in 2021 can now be found in the archives of the University of Edinburgh.

Gerald’s first marriage ended in divorce, but he found great happiness in his second marriage to Margaret Russell who he met in his 50s. Margaret became an author, with the pen name of Margaret Dunlop. She published a biography of him, Goodbye Berlin, in 2016.

Throughout his adult life Gerald was a committed Christian. His contributions to the community were many and varied, some related to his Christian faith such as helping to establish the Eric Liddell Centre at Holy Corner in Edinburgh, while others arose from his growing concerns for the natural world, such as establishing a community woodland close to his home in Biggar.

Gerald is survived by a son, a daughter, four grandchildren, and one great-grandson from his first marriage and Margaret’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who became a very close part of his own extended family. He and Margaret moved to Inverness in 2008 to be closer to her family, and they spent 12 happy years there until she died in 2020.

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