John Baker

John Randal Baker FRS (23 October 1900 – 8 June 1984) was an English biologist, zoologist, and microscopist, and a professor at the University of Oxford, where he was Emeritus Reader in Cytology. He received his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford in 1927. Early life Baker was the youngest of five children born to Rear Admiral Julian Alleyne Baker and his wife Geraldine Eugenie (née Alison). He was a grandson of General Sir Archibald Alison and among the papers collected in Baker's name at the Bodleian Library are volumes of correspondence and other material related to Alison's military service during the Indian Mutiny, Ashanti Campaign, and Egyptian Campaign of 1882. Born in Woodbridge, Baker grew up in a country home near Bromyard. At age ten, he was sent to Boxgrove School, near Guildford. Due to World War I, his schooling there was cut short and he joined the Bournemouth School of Flying at age sixteen. Though he achieved a pilot's certificate, he was excluded from the Royal Flying Corps due to inadequate eyesight and thereafter joined the Oxford University Officers' Training Corps. Upon war's end, Baker entered Oxford's New College, where he studied zoology. Among the small staff of the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy was Dr. (later Sir) Julian Huxley, of whom Baker would write a biographical memoir many years later. Other students in the department during Baker's time included Charles Elton, E. B. Ford, Alister Hardy and Carlos Blacker. Baker became the captain of New College's rowing team and completed his B.A. with first class honours in 1922, partially on the basis of his microscopical investigation of spermatogenesis in crickets.