Lawrence Ogilvie
Lawrence Ogilvie (5 July 1898 – 16 April 1980) was a Scottish plant pathologist who pioneered the study of wheat, fruit and vegetable diseases in the 20th century. From 1923, in his first job and aged only 25, when agriculture was Bermuda's major industry, Ogilvie identified the virus that had devastated the islands' high-value, lily-bulb crops in 204 bulb fields for 30 years. By introducing agricultural controls, he re-established the valuable export shipments to the US, increasing them to seven-fold the volume of earlier "virus years". He was established as a successful young scientist when he had a 3-inch column describing his work published by the world's premier scientific-journal Nature. Bermuda's exporting its three vegetable crops a year to the USA gave plant-pathologist Ogilvie much experience of vegetable diseases, such that on return to Britain, five years later, he became the UK expert on the diseases of commercially-grown vegetables and wheat from the 1930s to the 1960s. This knowledge was vital for Britain in World War II with severe food shortages and rationing. In total he wrote over 130 articles about plant diseases in journals of learned societies. Education Lawrence was born in Rosehearty, a fishing village on the north coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, on 5 July 1898. His father, the Reverend William Paton Ogilvie, was the minister of the Presbyterian church there. He attended Aberdeen Grammar School and took his BSc and MA at the University of Aberdeen in 1921 as the Fullerton Research Scholar with special distinction in Botany and Zoology. He was also awarded the Collie Prize for the most distinguished student in botany. In Aberdeen, he lectured on the Alpine flora of China. At Emmanuel College, Cambridge University he studied plant pathology and was awarded an MSc in 1923 for his work on tree slime fluxes, particularly willow, elm, horse chestnut, and apple trees. Career On graduating at Cambridge University he was offered to be the first scientifically trained plant pathologist and entomologist to work in either of the then British colonies of Bermuda or Mauritius. He chose Bermuda, taking trains in September 1923 from Scotland to the port of Avonmouth near Bristol to catch the SS Changunida banana boat to Bermuda. He was to be continuously employed from September 1923 in Bermuda, and then from 1928 in Bristol in the west of England, until he retired at the age of 65. At age 71, working from home, he researched necessary changes and published his sixth edition of the British government's official national Diseases of Vegetables Bulletin 123 110-page guide for commercial growers – his first edition of 84 pages was published in July 1941 when food was rationed and in short supply due to WWII. The bulletin was also translated into Spanish and published in 1964 as Enfermedades de las Hortalizas. Bermuda From November 1923 (age 24) to April 1928 he was the Bermuda Government's first plant pathologist and entomologist—the first Bermuda Government agricultural scientist. He developed agricultural laws for Bermuda; initiated seed testing; registered