Bonner, James Frederick, 1910-

Bonner, a biologist, taught at California Institute of Technology from 1935-1981, specializing in plant physiology and plant biochemistry.

Biography

James Bonner was born in Ansley, Nebraska, his mother's hometown, on a vacation trip. His father, Walter David Bonner, a chemist, was Professor at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, until James was five years old. He then became head of the Chemistry Department at the University of Utah. His mother, Grace Gaylord, was also a chemist, as was his paternal grandfather. His six siblings all received doctoral degrees.

In 1939 James married Harriet Rees; a son and a daughter resulted from the marriage. The marriage was dissolved in 1963 and in 1964 James married Ingelore Silderbach. They remained married until Ingelore's death in 1995.

Bonner did his undergraduate degree at the University of Utah, majoring in chemistry and spending his junior year (1929) at Caltech. He became a graduate student in biology at Caltech in 1931. He studied Drosophila genetics with Theodosius Dobzhansky and Alfred Sturtevant and plant physiology with Herman Dolk, Kenneth Thimann and Fritz Went. Bonner obtained his PhD in Biology in 1934.

He started as research fellow at Caltech in late 1935 and became full professor in 1946. He was made professor emeritus in 1981. After retirement he and his wife, Ingelore Bonner, founded a genetic company called Phytogen. The company was taken over by the J. G. Boswell Company in 1984.

During the Second World War, he was enlisted by the Emergency Rubber Project to work on increasing the rubber yeld of the guayule plant. Bonner's combined work on rubber and plant hormones was later applied in developing ways to increase the yield of rubber trees in Malaysia, a project for which he was a consultant for many years. Another area of his research covered how chromosomes functions in the growth and development of plants and animals. Bonner was always concerned with the practical application of biological knowledge to the problems of food supply and overpopulation, and he and Harrison Brown, a geochemist, and John Weir, a psychologist, published a book on this subject titled the 'Next Hundred Years' in 1957. Following the success of this book, Bonner participated in several conferences on this topic, most notably the 'Next 90 Years' conference and the 'Next 80 Years' conference at Caltech, in 1967 and 1977 respectively. He also participated in science policy and funding debates through his involvement with the Calbiochem Foundation and the Keystone Center.

He was a member of at least twelve national and international societies, among these: the National Academy of Sciences (1950), the German Academy of Sciences (1970), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (fellow), the American Society of Plant Physiologists (President, 1948-49), and the Botanical Society of America (chairman, Physiological section, 1949-50).

He traveled all over much of the world, including climbing many mountains such as the Himalayas. Many detailed reports of his travels can be found among his papers. Skiing was his passion, and skiing vacations were considered 'sacred' and never sacrificed in favor of work commitments. For many years he was part of the National Ski Patrol system and also active in the Sierra Club.