John Innes Centre

The John Innes Centre (JIC) located in Norwich, Norfolk, England, is an independent centre for research and training in plant and microbial science. It is a registered charity (No 223852) grant-aided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the European Research Council (ERC) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is a member of the Norwich Research Park. In 2014, JIC was awarded a silver Athena SWAN Charter award for equailty in the workplace.

History

The John Innes Horticultural Institution was founded in 1910 at Merton Park, Surrey (now London Borough of Merton), with funds bequeathed by John Innes, a merchant and philanthropist. The Institution occupied Innes's former estate at Merton Park until 1945 when it moved to Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire. It moved to its present site in 1967.

John Innes Compost was developed by the institution in the 1930s.

In the 1980s, the administration of the John Innes Institute was combined with that of the Plant Breeding Institute and the Nitrogen Fixation Laboratory. In 1994, following the relocation of the operations of other two organisations to the Norwich site, the three were merged as the John Innes Centre.

John Innes

John Innes may refer to:

John Innes (philanthropist)

John Innes JP (20 January 1829 – 8 August 1904) was an English property developer and philanthropist. From the 1860s he developed Merton Park as a garden suburb in Merton, Surrey. In his will, he left funds and part of his estate at Merton for the establishment of a horticultural institute. This institute, the John Innes Centre, continues to bear his name today.

Family

Innes was born on 20 January 1829 in Hampstead, Middlesex (now London Borough of Camden). He was the sixth of seven children of West Indies merchant John Innes (1786 – 1869) and his wife Mary Reid (1792 – 1849), a daughter of brewer Andrew Reid. The family owned sugar plantations in Jamaica and imported rum into England. They supported the anti-slavery campaign in the West Indies and eventually sold all the business interests. Innes was educated at boarding school in Brighton.

Career

Innes's early career was as a wine merchant in the City of London, but, in 1864, he founded the City of London Real Property Company with his older brother James. The company developed and managed office buildings in the City, but also purchased farm land in Merton in 1864 and created the Merton Park Estate Company. For his own home, Innes purchased Manor Farm. Around 1872, Innes became Lord of the Manor of Merton.

John Innes (politician)

John Innes (died July 1951) was a municipal politician in Toronto, Canada. He was born in Scotland and immigrated to Canada in around 1900 when he was in his twenties. A carpenter by trade he built a home in on Merton Street in North Toronto. He then became a developer, building several other homes around the area. He married Jesse Coutts, but she died in 1928 after being hit by a golf ball.

He served eight years on Toronto city council before being elected to the Board of Control in 1947. He became well known for his work officially greeting soldiers as they returned to the city during both the Second World War and the Korean War. He was in charge of notifying family members when a troop train would be arriving, and personally greeted almost every train to come into the city. This work earned him an MBE. Another cause was improving the safety of service stations and their employees. As a result of this after his death it was proposed that all service stations shut down for five minutes in honour of him.