Scientist honored as new Royal Society Fellow

John White, a cell biologist and biomedical engineer at UW–Madison, has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the highest scientific accolade granted in the United Kingdom.

Established 345 years ago, the Royal Society is the oldest independent science academy in the world. Each year it elects new fellows on the basis of distinctive achievements in natural science, mathematics, engineering and medicine. Past fellows include Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein.

“It’s rather nice to be remembered by my countrymen,” says the British-born White, who has earned acclaim for dual contributions to the fields of microscopy and cellular genetics. A UW–Madison professor of anatomy and molecular biology, White also heads the Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation, which is developing powerful laser-scanning microscopes to enable scientists to explore the dynamic environment within cells.

“White has played a critical role in the invention and refinement of techniques for seeing into living organisms,” says Sean Carroll, a prominent developmental biologist at UW–Madison. “[Building on] his huge contribution to microscopy, White has also been able to peer in unprecedented detail at two of the biggest mysteries in biology: the development of embryos and the wiring of nervous systems.”

White grew up in Richmond, a town situated west of London. As an undergraduate, he studied physics at Brunel University and in 1969 began doctoral research at Cambridge University. White studied the nervous system of the worm C. elegans, and simultaneously developed imaging techniques to graphically reconstruct the C. elegans nervous system.

After earning his doctorate, White remained at Cambridge and worked at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Notably, he was a member of the Cambridge team that in the mid-1980s developed the first confocal microscope, enabling biologists to observe the inner workings of living cells. The microscope has since become a standard tool in biomedical research.

In 1993, White left Cambridge to join UW–Madison, a recognized leader in C. elegans research.

Selecting scientists by a process of peer review, The Royal Society on May 26 elected 44 fellows from the UK and Commonwealth and six foreign members from other countries. Royal Society Fellows retain their status for life and are entitled to use the abbreviation FRS after their names.