Profile: Professor Michael Locke

By Mitchell Zimmer

There are people whose talents extend beyond their occupation to make an impact in other seemingly unrelated fields. Professor Emeritus Michael Locke of the Department of Biology has combined the skills of a focused mind, keen eye and adroit hands to not only pursue a distinguished career as a scientist but also make inroads as an artisan. Professionally, he has used insects, particularly their cells, to study fundamental problems in biology. Insects, like flies or butterflies, are especially suitable for experiments in developmental biology because of the dramatic changes in their form from larvae to pupa to adult.

Rather than beginning with other people's work, Locke has always gone to the cell, the organism, or the system itself, to discover problems. He says, "For three hundred years teachers followed written books in the belief that insects do not respire by lungs, and yet I can show anyone with a hand lens that caterpillars have lungs. Much of the joy of science lies in firsthand observation". Locke adds, "Nature poses the question to be answered. We just have to make the right observations to see what She has given us". Much of his work involves microscopy. He discovered particles, called Golgi Complex beads, that are organizers for the process of preparing protein secretions within insect cells. Another of his discoveries is the resemblance of the envelope in bacteria to the outermost layer of insect cuticle. "Discovery, finding something to be explained, is at the center of my work" Locke says, "For that reason I have always done my own research". He feels equally strongly about doing his own writing and illustrating.

Locke credits his attitude to his graduate school experience. "Science always interested me, but I might have got into research in chemistry or botany rather than zoology. I wasn't fixed on insects when I went to Cambridge, but just at that time Sir Vincent Wigglesworth, the "father of insect biology" began to take students. He didn't like to take students, they got in the way of his research, so he left them very much on their own” says Locke, "That's where I acquired the idea that graduate students must learn to work independently."

After earning his Ph.D. from Cambridge, Locke went to the University of the West Indies as a Lecturer in Zoology, preferring adventure over scientific security. After a fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute (later university) he went on to Case Western Reserve University as a professor before becoming chairman of the Department of Zoology at Western in 1971, a position he held for fourteen years.

The Locke's are a Western family. Many have earned their degrees here. John (oldest son) and his wife Heather, now professors of Genetics at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, are both Western graduates, as are son Marius (now a professor at the University of Toronto) and his wife Dianne (Masters in Nursing). Marius is a former Ontario All-star Mustang football player and was a Homecoming MVP. Locke's wife is Dr. Janet V. Collins, who came from being a professor of Biology at Dalhousie University, to enter Law School at Western, being called to the bar in 1987. Janet served on Western's Board of Governors for two terms and has participated in London community organizations.

Locke has received many honors (Raman Professor, India; Doctor of Science, Cambridge; Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; Killam Fellow; Honorary Fellow of the Entomological Society of America; Certificate of Distinction, International Congress of Entomology, Brazil; Honorary Fellow Royal Entomological Society and most recently the Helmuth Prize at Western), but most satisfying to him was the award of the Wigglesworth Memorial Medal and Lecture in 2000. This brought his career full circle to its beginning as a student under Sir Vincent at Cambridge.

Since becoming Professor Emeritus in 1994, Locke has had more time for his non-biological interests. People passing through the first floor of Earth Sciences in the last three years may have noticed a display of several hundred gemstones that he has cut and polished. This was replaced in February by a second exhibit, displaying his talent for unmasking the hidden beauty and elegance of natural materials. His experience as a lapidary, microscopist and biologist has opened another field - the identification of bone, ivory and horn antiquities. He has found that major museums of the world as well as the American and the English Antiques Roadshows, often misidentify the materials from which antiques are made. He says that serving on the MacIntosh Gallery 'Antiques Roadshow' as an expert on Bone, Ivory and Horn gave him great pleasure. He is now putting together a book aimed mainly at helping antique dealers to identify natural materials. His research on insects continues, together with a new field - bone structure.

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