Pontecorvo, Guido Pellegrino Arrigo (1907-1999 : geneticist and Professor of Genetics : University of Glasgow, Scotland

Guido Pellegrino Arrigo Pontecorvo, who liked to be known as "Ponte", was born in Pisa, Italy on 29th November 1907. He was the eldest of eight children born to non-observant Jewish Italian parents, Massimo and Maria Maroni Pontecorvo. Massimo, was a wealthy businessman who inherited his father Pellegrino Pontecorvo's successful textile company when he died in 1918. The company was said to have employed around 1500 workers and by 1920 was one of the largest textile companies in Italy. Pontecorvo's brother Bruno (1913-1993) was an Italian-born nuclear physicist, an early assistant of Enrico Fermi and the author of numerous studies in high energy physics. He is known for defecting to the Soviet Union in 1950. When asked if he knew where his brother was Guido Pontecorvo responded, "I am not my brother's keeper". His other brother, Gillo Pontecorvo (1919-2006), was a filmmaker and his best known films include La battaglia di Algeri (1966) and Burn (1969) starring Marlon Brando.

Stimulated by a high-school teacher, Pontecorvo took a degree at the University of Pisa's Faculty of Agriculture and graduated in 1928 as a Doctor of Agricultural Science. He followed this with two postgraduate courses in silkworm breeding and agrarian studies in Milan and Pisa between 1929 and 1930. After his postgraduate studies, and two years of compulsory military service, Pontecorvo worked with E Avanzi, (a plant geneticist from the Faculty of Agriculture in the University of Pisa) who was now director of an experimental agricultural institute in Trento. He soon moved to Florence to lead the cattle breeding program of the Tuscan Ispettorato Compartimentale Agrario. Here, for eight years, he organized the recording and use of weight gain and draught ability data in a successful selective breeding program applied to the Chiana and Maremmana breeds.

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