Leonard Francis La Cour (28 July 1907 – 3 November 1984) was a British cytologist particularly known for his work on plant chromosomes. He spent nearly all of his career at the John Innes Horticultural Institution (1922–72), where, despite a lack of any formal scientific training – he left school at fourteen and never attended university – he rose to senior principal scientific officer. After retiring from the John Innes institute, he held an honorary chair at the University of East Anglia (1973–78). His research encompassed studies of the cell nucleus and chromosome structure and function, using light and electron microscopy. He developed novel cytological methods and published a generally well-received laboratory manual, The Handling of Chromosomes (1942), with his frequent collaborator, C. D. Darlington.
Biography He was born on 28 July 1907 in the Borough of Lambeth, south London, to Maude (née Coomber) and Francis Lacour, both of whom worked at Buckingham Palace. His father, a chef, died when he was an infant, and his mother remarried and moved to the Isle of Bute; he was brought up by his grandmother at Merton Park in Surrey. She ran a tobacconist's, and they lived above the shop. He attended the local school in Merton until he was fourteen. In 1922, despite lacking scientific training, he secured a position as a laboratory assistant at the nearby John Innes Horticultural Institution, after an interview with William Bateson, the institute's director. La Cour later recalled that his early duties had included cleaning the windows. He remained at the institute for much of his career, rising to technical assistant (1926), senior experimental officer (1948), acting head of the cytology department (1953), chief experimental officer (1956) and senior principal scientific officer (1970), and moving with the institute when it relocated to Bayfordbury in Hertfordshire in 1949 and then to Norwich in 1967. He retired from the John Innes in 1972, and took up an honorary chair at the University of East Anglia, which he held from 1973 until 1978. He changed his surname to La-Cour for his earliest publications, and then to La Cour from 1931. In 1935 or 1936 he married Anne Wilkes; the couple did not have children. Portrait photography and gardening were among his interests. In retirement he moved to Eastbourne, where he died after a stroke on 3 November 1984.
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