Region mourns science pioneers Lovell and Potten

THE deaths of two of the North West’s most influential figures in science and innovation have been announced.

Sir Bernard Lovell, Emeritus Professor of Radioastronomy at the University of Manchester and the founder and first director of the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, died on Monday aged 98.

Epistem, the stem cell research company, announced the death of its founder, Professor Christopher Potten, at the age of 71.

Sir Bernard was born in 1913 in Gloucestershire and studied at the University of Bristol before coming to Manchester to work in the Department of Physics in 1936.

During the Second World War, he led a team that developed H2S radar, work for which he was later awarded the OBE.

He returned to the university’s physics department in 1945 and began work on cosmic rays using ex-military radar equipment.

He brought this equipment to a University botany site at Jodrell Bank in late 1945, founding the world-famous observatory which now exists there.

Dr Potten was born in India in 1940 and became one of the world’s most influential figures in epithelial biology, pioneering adult stem cell research in this area from the early 1970s.

He led a research team at the Paterson Institute For Cancer Research at the Christie Hospital, Manchester, until retiring in 2000.

After this time he remained an Honorary Professor in Manchester and Nottingham and in 2000 co-founded Epistem with Dr Catherine Booth, which is now a 60-stong AIM-listed company.