Winslow Briggs

Career

Between 1955 and 1967, Briggs was an instructor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and successively became an assistant professor in 1957. In 1962 he was promoted to associate professor and became a professor in 1966. In 1967 he moved to Harvard University as a professor in the Department of Biology.

In 1973 he returned to Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University as a professor and as a Director of the Department of Plant Biology, Carnegie Institution for Science. From 1993 until his death in 2019, he continued to do research as a director emeritus in the Department of Plant Biology at Carnegie Institution for Science.

In addition to memberships in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), Briggs was a member of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (President in 1981), the American Society of Plant Physiologists (chairman 1975-1976), the Botanical Society of America, the Nature Conservancy, and the American Society for Photobiology.

Research

Briggs conducted research on the physiology and biochemistry in the development of plants in response to light. He made major contributions to understanding the biochemical and physical characteristics of photoreceptors of plants. He demonstrated through experiments that the phototropic bending of plant stems to follow a light source has its basis in the transport of auxin. He identified and studied both the red and far-red light photoreceptors of plants and the blue light receptor that mediates phototropism. Using thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) Briggs was able to clone the gene for phototropin.

According to ISIHighlyCited, Briggs is one of the most cited scientists in the field of botany and zoology. Briggs was (co-) author of articles in journals such as American Journal of Botany, Nature, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Science and Scientific American. Along with John L. Spudich he was editor of the Handbook of Photosensory Receptors (2005).

He was an avid mountaineer and had scaled several prominent peaks. He was a volunteer at Henry W. Coe State Park for 40 years. He organized volunteers in 2007 to study the park's recovery from a wildfire, and discovered that the smoke contained chemicals that helped to stimulate the sprouting of seeds of rare plants that lie dormant and return after a fire.

Briggs died on February 11, 2019, at Stanford Medical Center at the age of 90.