George William Percy Dawson, who died recently in Dublin aged 76, was the founder of the department of genetics at Trinity College Dublin, a patron of the visual arts and a promoter of Third World development aid.
The only son of Mr and Mrs Percy Dawson, of Alderley Edge, Cheshire, he was a brilliant student at King's School, Macclesfield. Entering Clare College, Cambridge, he read natural science, specialising in genetics and botany. and was much influenced by Ronald Fisher, who had explained evolution in terms of genetics.
Dawson began his research at Cambridge in the embryonic field of bacterial genetics working under David Catcheside and moved soon to a lectureship in the school of botany in Trinity, arriving, as he liked whimsically to recall, on April Fool's Day, 1950. In the years to come many would have thought of him as English, but from the 1960s he most emphatically did not. He considered himself Irish and became an Irish citizen.
He was the first person to study genetics in Ireland and, fortunately, he was a bacterial geneticist, a very important field in which research was relatively inexpensive. Discoveries in bacterial genetics, mainly in England, France and the US (1950-65) led to the emergence of the so-called "Central Dogma": DNA makes RNA makes protein according to the genetic code.
This area of genetics, often called molecular biology, led later to extraordinary revelations in general biology, and to the technologies of genetic engineering and biotechnology. In the period 1950-70, Dawson and his students (including Stuart Glover, Peter Smith-Keary, Shahla Thompson and John Atkins) studied mutation and made some important contributions.
His own research with his close colleague Smith-Keary was significant. Interpreting some strange patterns of mutations, they guessed correctly that there were mobile genetic elements in bacteria that were related to the controlling elements discovered by Barbara McClintock in plants. Dawson's work was referred to by the other notable Dublin geneticist of the period, William Hayes, in his great book The Genetics Of Bacteria And Their Viruses.
But his main achievements in academic life related to people and institutions. In genetics he chivvied and inspired his staff and students and provided new and better facilities for their work.
He founded the department of genetics in 1958 with a short-term grant from the Irish Sugar Company. Now only 31, he quickly forged strong links with An Foras Taluntais (now Teagasc) and arranged for Patrick Cunningham and Vincent Connolly to lecture on animal and plant breeding respectively. He won many research grants. The department was such a success that the college gradually took over the costs.
He became a fellow (FTCD) in 1961, member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1963 and professor of genetics in 1968. He continued as head of the department for 30 years, retiring in 1987 after his second serious illness, and David McConnell, whom he had appointed to a lectureship in 1970, succeeded him.
The department was research-led, and Dawson chose the most rigorous external examiners. He insisted: "You must never give in to lower standards. It seems to me that the criterion of standards must always be absolute."
Now housed in the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, with about 100 researchers, the department has recently been described by Arnold Levine, of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton in a report to Science Foundation Ireland, as "simply first-rate. It is a molecular biology department that could compete with any in the US or elsewhere."
His second great love was modern art, and again he was a pioneer. In 1959, with a grant from the Trinity Trust, he founded the College Gallery, now a large collection of original paintings, drawings and lithographs "which may be hired by students and staff".
A course he initiated in the history of art in the BA General Studies became so popular that he was able to persuade the college to appoint a full-time lecturer, Anne Crookshank, leading in 1966 to the foundation of the very successful department of history of art.
He had begun in the late 1960s to organise art exhibitions in a temporarily vacant basement in the new Berkeley Library, including a Picasso retrospective. In the 1970s he raised money for the purpose-built Douglas Hyde Gallery. He arranged for the purchase of the first three modern public sculptures in the college (by Moore, Calder and Pomodoro), persuading Moore and Pomodoro to donate their pieces at cost. He made a point of supporting young Irish artists and donated his fine collection of modern art to the college and the college gallery.
Dawson had a deep social conscience, he was strongly Christian, but his religion was generous, ecumenical, unorthodox and essentially private. But he was as much a man of action as a man of faith (or ideas). In the 1940s while still at school he began a lifelong interest in the developing countries and the Commonwealth. He thought and wrote about a "Commonwealth university system" and corresponded with the secretary general, Arnold Smith, with Jomo Kenyatta and Julius Nyerere, presidents of Kenya and Tanzania respectively.
When he saw Irish students joining the British Voluntary Service Overseas, he proposed in 1971 to set up what became the Agency for Personal Service Overseas. He founded Hedco (1975), the Irish university agency through which universities, North and South, took part in development projects, and he chaired it for about 10 years.
He was an inspiring friend and mentor to countless students from all faculties, and a keen supporter of all kinds of student activities. As just one example, he became president of the DU Harriers and Athletic Club. He discovered that Trinity and UCD could not race against each other (UCD athletics was controlled by the GAA, TCD's was not; the infernal bans dug deeper then). He encouraged the students from both colleges to talk, and somehow a way was found. He commissioned and paid for a trophy by Edward Delaney, believed to be Delaney's first commission from his own country.
He discovered that many of the important varieties of daffodils had been bred in Ireland, and persuaded President Mary Robinson to have a collection planted at Áras an Úachtarán. He assembled and purchased at considerable expense 137 Irish-bred varieties, and donated them to the President and a similar collection to the more public Fota House.
In the 1960s Dawson became the first chairman of the TCD Academic Staff Association, and participated in the formation of the Irish Federation of University Teachers, becoming chairman in 1969. He played a leading role in the discussions about the proposed "merger" of Trinity and UCD. He was astute and determined in making the case that Archbishop McQuaid's "ban" on Catholics attending Trinity College should be lifted, as it was in 1970. He served as senior dean (1969-74) and registrar (1976-80) of the college.
Dawson was instrumental in Archbishop Buchanan's decision to remove the college chapel from the jurisdiction of the Church of Ireland and it is now administered by the interdenominational Chapel Committee.
He thought it "easy to teach knowledge and understanding, but very difficult to teach creativity". Though he could be a confusing lecturer, he was a wonderful teacher and believed Trinity, at its best, allowed students "to develop an independence of mind and gave them a chance to take initiatives".
Prof Brian West commented: "It is remarkable that one individual could achieve so much, and in such a diversity of fields. No doubt Ireland was fortunate that George Dawson adopted her as his home and nation, but I think it is equally true that he was fortunate to have come as Trinity and Dublin, and Ireland itself, provided an environment in which he could flourish and exercise his astonishing creative talent."
His contributions in the arts were recognised by the Royal Hibernian Academy and the National College of Art and Design. In genetics and art, his work was recognised by an honorary degree from Dublin University, a rare distinction to one of its own. He received the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his work on Third World development.
He came a narrow third in the large and distinguished field in the 1974 election for provostship, which was won by Leland Lyons. This loss was perhaps the greatest disappointment of his life. Moving easily in academic, political and international circles, with such a wide range of interests, and with such deft political skills, it has been said Dawson was the finest provost the 20th-century college never had.
George Dawson: born August 7th, 1927; died March 25th, 2004
(A memorial service for George Dawson will be held on Thursday, April 22nd, at 5.15 p.m. in the College Chapel, followed by a reception in the Smurfit Institute of Genetics.)