biology

Russell Foster

Russell Foster is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Russell Foster rather than just read about it. In short: Russell Grant Foster (born 1959) is a British professor of circadian neuroscience, the Director of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and the Head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi) at the University of Oxford He is also a Nicholas Kurti Senior Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. Foster and his group are credited with key contributions to the discovery of the non-rod, non-cone, photosens…

Key takeaways

Russell Foster belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Russell Foster to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Russell Foster from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Russell Grant Foster (born 1959) is a British professor of circadian neuroscience, the Director of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and the Head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi) at the University of Oxford He is also a Nicholas Kurti Senior Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. Foster and his group are credited with key contributions to the discovery of the non-rod, non-cone, photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (pRGCs) in the mammalian retina which provide input to the circadian rhythm system. He has written and co-authored over a hundred scientific publications. Since 2018 he has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Society journal Interface Focus.

Education Foster was born in Aldershot. He was educated at Heron Wood School and Farnborough Sixth Form College. In 1980, he was awarded a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Zoology followed by PhD in 1983, both from the University of Bristol. His thesis on extraretinal photoreceptor cells was supervised by Brian Follett.

Career and research From 1988 to 1995 Foster was a member of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Biological Rhythms at the University of Virginia, where he worked closely with Michael Menaker. In 1995, he returned to UK and started his own lab at Imperial College London, where he became Chair of Molecular Neuroscience within the Faculty of Medicine. He later transferred his laboratory to the University of Oxford to engage in more translational research.

Transplanted suprachiasmatic nucleus determines circadian period While at the University of Virginia, Foster and Menaker performed experiments where the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) was tested by neural transplantation of donor's SCN to a recipient with an ablated SCN. In the experiment, the donor was a mutant strain of hamster with a shortened circadian period. The recipient was a wild-type hamster. Transplantation was done the other way around as well, with wild-type hamster as the donor and mutant strain hamster as the recipient. After the transplantation, the formerly wild-type hamster displayed a shortened period which resembled the mutant, and the mutant-strain hamster showed normal period. The SCN restored rhythm to arrhythmic recipients, which afterwards always exhibited the circadian period of the donor. This result led to the conclusion that the SCN is sufficient and necessary for mammalian circadian rhythms.

Rods and cones unnecessary for entrainment In 1991, Foster and his colleagues provided evidence that rods and cones are not necessary for entrainment of an animal to light. In this experiment, Foster gave light pulses to retinally degenerative mice. These mice were homozygous for the rd allele and were shown to have no rods in their retina. Only a few cones were found to remain in the retina. To study the effects of light entrainment, magnitude of phase shift of locomotor activity was measured. The results showed that both mice with normal retina and mice with degenerate retina showed similar entrainment patterns. Foster hypothesized that circadian photoreception occurs with a small number of cones without an outer layer or that an unrecognised class of photoreceptive cells are present. In 1999, Foster studied light entrainment on mice without cones or both rods and cones. Mice without cones or without both photoreceptive cells (rd/rd cl allele) still entrained to light. Meanwhile, mice with eyes removed could not entrain to light. Foster concluded that rods and cones are unnecessary for entrainment to light, and that the murine eye contains additional photoreceptive cell types. Later studies showed that melanopsin expressing photoreceptive retinal ganglion cells (pGRCs) were accountable for non-rod, non-cone entrainment to light.

Popular science Foster is the co-author with writer and broadcaster Leon Kreitzman of two popular science books on circadian rhythms, Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks that Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing and Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Enable Living Things to Thrive and Survive. He has also co-written a book titled Sleep: a Very Short Introduction. He wrote Life Time : The New Science of the Body Clock, and How It Can Revolutionize Your Sleep and Health.

Awards and honours Foster was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008 and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2013. Foster was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to science.

Foster has received international recognition for his contributions to the discovery of photosensitive ganglion cells include:

Honma Prize (Japan, 1997) David G. Cogan Award (USA, 2001) Zoological Society of London Scientific Medal (UK, 2000) Edridge Green Medal (Royal College of Ophthalmologists, UK, 2005) Peter C. Farrell Prize in Sleep Medicine (2015) Nikken International Science Award for his expertise in the neuroscience of sleep.(2015) The Daylight Award 2020, for Daylight Research

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Russell Foster

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Russell Foster claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Russell Foster before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Russell Foster ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Russell Foster

In research: Russell Foster appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Russell Foster in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Russell Foster is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1959 births, Alumni of the University of Bristol, British fellows of the Royal Society, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Russell Foster outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Russell Foster in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Russell Foster means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Russell Foster out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Russell Foster in simple terms?

Why does Russell Foster matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Russell Foster?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Russell Foster.