Muriel Wheldale Onslow

Muriel Wheldale Onslow (born March 31, 1880, Birmingham, Eng.—died May 19, 1932) was a British biochemist whose study of the inheritance of flower colour in the common snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus) contributed to the foundation of modern genetics. She also made important discoveries concerning the biochemistry of pigment molecules in plants, particularly the group of pigments known as anthocyanins.

Muriel was the only daughter of barrister John Wheldale. She attended an all-girls school in Birmingham before enrolling in Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied botany (she did not receive a degree, since Cambridge did not offer degrees to women then). In 1902–03 she joined the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women, a research facility shared by the female students and staff of Newnham and Girton colleges. At Balfour, Wheldale worked with British biologist William Bateson, who in 1900 had rediscovered a paper on plant hybrids written by Gregor Mendel and was working to understand the transmission of traits in plants. Wheldale was given space in the Botanic Garden at Cambridge to grow snapdragons. Her experiments with crossing plants of different flower colour affirmed the theory of Mendelian inheritance by demonstrating that inherited traits, rather than being a fusion of parental characters, are separate entities, transmitted to offspring in precise proportions. Wheldale’s landmark paper (“The Inheritance of Flower Colour in Antirrhinum majus”) appeared in 1907, two years after Bateson introduced the term genetics to the describe the field of study concerned with the principles of heredity.

During the course of her research, Wheldale came to believe that anthocyanin biosynthesis in plants was catalyzed by an oxidase enzyme and was associated with photosynthesis and the process of sugar formation. From 1911 to 1914, as part of her investigation of this hypothesis, she isolated and characterized the anthocyanins of snapdragons. Wheldale realized, however, that to thoroughly understand these molecules, she needed formal training in biochemistry, so in 1914 she joined the laboratory of Frederick Gowland Hopkins in the department of biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. The move enabled her to broaden the focus of her research efforts to include the study of metabolism and the chemical structure of plant pigments. By 1916 she had compiled her knowledge of the genetics of pigment inheritance and the biochemistry of anthocyanins in The Anthocyanin Pigments of Plants. The work was the first to explain the chemical basis of inherited traits and represented a landmark publication in both genetics and biochemistry. Also in 1916, she met Huia Onslow, who shared her scientific interests. Onslow, paralyzed from the waist down as the result of a diving accident, conducted his research from a home laboratory. With Wheldale’s assistance, his studies became known to colleagues at Cambridge and elsewhere. The two were married in 1919. Huia died three years later.

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In 1920 Wheldale Onslow published Practical Plant Biochemistry, and in 1925 she released a second edition of The Anthocyanin Pigments of Plants, revised extensively to include information on advances in scientific understanding of anthocyanins. In 1926 she was appointed a university lecturer in biochemistry, becoming one of the first women to hold such a position at Cambridge. The first volume of Principles of Plant Biochemistry, a textbook on the chemical compounds of plants and plant physiology, was published in 1931. The second volume was only partially completed when Wheldale Onslow died the following year, presumably in Cambridge.