Nessy Allen
Helen Newton Turner, the animal geneticist who spent most of her professional life working for the improvement of the wool industry, died this week [late November 1995-Ed.]. Not many scientists in Australia have contributed as much and as directly to the growth and well-being of a major Australian industry as she did. Not that she would have agreed with this description; she was a very modest woman and would have said, 'It wasn't me, it was my team'.
Dr Newton Turner was born in Sydney in 1908. Her mother was a University medallist from Sydney University and her father worked for the State Children's Relief Department, becoming Assistant Secretary. Proud of a gifted daughter, they encouraged her to study, as did her teachers. Though mathematics was her favourite subject at school (she took Honours in it for the Leaving Certificate), she did not realise that science offered career possibilities other than teaching, and so she enrolled in an Architecture degree at the University of Sydney, qualifying with Honours in 1930.
Because of the depressed labour market, the only work she could find with a firm of architects was that of a secretary - provided she learned shorthand and typing. She accepted her transitional status (as it proved to be) for a while, but when she saw a job advertised by CSIR as Secretary to Dr I Clunies-Ross, then Officer-in-Charge at the McMaster Laboratory of the Division of Animal Health, she decided that might be more interesting. While working, she enrolled at the University in further mathematics subjects and took all the statistics courses which were offered. As a result she was soon appointed Secretary and Statistician at the Laboratory and in 1936 was reclassified as Technical Officer. In 1938 she spent a year's leave in England where she studied with Sir Ronald Fisher, one of the founders of modern statistics; and on her return she was appointed Consulting Statistician to the Division of Animal Health and Production. In 1956 she accepted a position as leader of the Animal Breeding Section in the now Division of Animal Genetics, to take charge of its sheep breeding experiments, and it was here that she emerged as one of the foremost researchers at CSIRO to tackle the problems faced by the wool industry in the early fifties, because of the increasing demand for synthetic fibres,
She made major contributions to the industry in three areas. The first was as an experimental scientist, introducing objective measurement methods into breeding. The second was as a communicator and publicist of the new methods. The third was as an educator of postgraduate students and Department of Agriculture staff.
On her appointment to the Division of Animal Genetics in 1956, she took charge of breeding experiments already under way and initiated experimental work on the different characteristics of wool. She introduced quantitative or population genetics, developed in Britain and the United States in the 1940s, fundamental to successful sheep breeding, a method she pioneered in Australia, greatly improving both the quantity and the quality of the wool produced in this country.
Her next achievement was in selling the idea of micromeasurement to breeders and to the industry. This was a difficult task because at that time judgments of quality were made by assessing fibre diameter by the naked eye - an impossible task. It was only when wool began to be sold according to micromeasurement that breeders became more willing to adopt the techniques she advocated in genetic selection.
Helen Newton Turner was not only an outstanding experimental scientist; she was also a theoretician. Together with a colleague she published what is now a standard text, widely used in sheep growing countries throughout the world, on the theoretical side of quantitative genetics and sheep breeding, but she was not satisfied with simply demonstrating her findings, She travelled widely within Australia, giving seminars at universities and other institutions, participating in short courses, and talking to breeders wherever possible, She became well known in country areas, partly through her lecturing and partly because for many years she broadcast on the ABC's Country Hour. Her message was clear: use measurement, as well as judging your animals by eye.
As an educator Helen Newton Turner was involved with many developing countries and worked for several weeks at a time with groups of students from India, Pakistan and Argentina as well as individual students from other countries. At home she helped train graduate sheep and wool extension officers in all State Departments of Agriculture and afterwards maintained contact with them. Though working at CSIRO, she acted as co-supervisor of PhD and MSc students from several Australian universities.
Her work in and for countries outside Australia was not confined to training students. From the late 1960s to the late 1980s (when arthritis prevented her from further travelling) she spent periods ranging from weeks to several months in countries of the Middle East, Argentina, Bulgaria, China, Ethiopia, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Peru and the USSR, working on and assessing various types of sheep development programs. Almost yearly she was an invited speaker at conferences in Europe, the United States, the USSR, China and Japan, at most of which she led an Australian delegation; so it is not surprising that she was showered with honours. Among the many, those she was proudest of were the OBE and the Order of Australia; she also appeared as Ceres on the Food and Agriculture Organisation Medal of the United Nations; and she was one of two women elected as Foundation Fellows of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences
For nearly 20 years after her official retirement she carried on her research, full of energy and a zest for life, She was always ready to laugh and quite unimpressed by her own eminence. She was a generous person, always willing to help; though she did not tolerate fools gladly, it would be hard to find anyone who did not like her. At 87 she still had the vigour and intellectual vitality of someone half her age. Perhaps the citation for the award of the DSc, honoris causa, by Macquarie University in 1991, sums up her life best: 'She has been an inspiration to a generation of quantitative geneticists and sheep breeders and is rightly regarded as a world expert in her field.'
Nessy Allen is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Science and Technology Studies, University of New South Wales. This article originally appeared in The Australian, and is reprinted here with permission.