Lorna Casselton

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Lorna Casselton (18 July 1938 – 14 February 2014) was a British geneticist and professor who made major contributions to the genetics of fungi. She is best known for studying how fungi develop sexually, especially the mushroom Coprinus cinereus (now Coprinopsis cinerea).

Early life
Lorna Ann Smith was born in Rochford, Essex, to William Charles Henry Smith and Cecile Smith. Her family ran a smallholding, and her father’s interest in natural history and genetics helped steer her and her sister toward biology. She attended Southend High School for Girls and went on to University College London, where she earned a BSc in botany and a PhD in 1964.

Academic career
Casselton began her career as a lecturer and researcher at Royal Holloway College in London. She later became Professor of Genetics at Queen Mary University of London (1989–1991). She received postdoctoral fellowships from AFRC/BBSRC and then a BBSRC Senior Research Fellowship in 1995. She was a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford from 1993 to 2003, and became Professor of Fungal Genetics at Oxford in 1997. Her work focused on sexual development in fungi and she contributed to more than 100 publications.

She served on the Royal Society’s Council, first in 2002–2003 and then again from 2006 as Vice-President and Foreign Secretary. As Foreign Secretary, she gave the Royal Society Rutherford Lecture in South Africa and the Blackett Lecture in India, traveling to 27 countries during her tenure.

Personal life
Casselton married Peter John Casselton in 1961; they divorced in 1978. She married William Joseph Dennis Tollett in 1981. She died in Oxford after a short illness in 2014, aged 75.

Awards and honours
- Fellow of the Royal Society (1999)
- Member of Academia Europaea (2008)
- Honorary Doctor of Science from Queen Mary University of London (2009)
- Honorary Doctor of Science from University College London (2010)
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to fungal genetics and international science (2012)
- Honorary Membership of the British Mycological Society (2002)

Selected publications
Casselton’s notable works include:
- The origin of multiple mating specificities in Coprinus cinereus (Genetics, 2005)
- Mate recognition in fungi (Heredity, 2002)
- DNA-mediated transformation of the basidiomycete Coprinus cinereus (EMBO Journal, 1987)
- Molecular genetics of mating recognition in basidiomycete fungi (Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, 1998)
- A constitutively active G-protein-coupled receptor causes mating self-compatibility in Coprinus cinereus (EMBO Journal, 1999)

Lorna Casselton is remembered as a leading figure in fungal genetics, whose research advanced understanding of how fungi mate and develop, and whose leadership helped shape science policy and international collaboration.