Marshall Hatch


Marshall Davidson Hatch AM was an Australian biochemist and plant physiologist. He was the Chief Research Scientist at the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry in Canberra. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Science and was awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of Göttingen and the University of Queensland. In Australia, in 1966, he elucidated, jointly with Charles Roger Slack, the C4 pathway for the fixation of carbon, which is also sometimes known as the Hatch-Slack pathway. He is now retired.

Early life

Hatch was born in Perth, Western Australia to Alice and Lloyd Davidson Hatch. His father was an accountant and the family moved to Sydney in 1947. His primary education was at Applecross Primary School and he then had a year of high school at Wesley College before moving east. He was 14 when he commenced at Newington College where he completed the last four years of his high school education. He was a member of the First XV Rugby team and won the State under 17 years mile championship at Newington. He then majored in biochemistry at the University of Sydney completing his BSc with Honours in 1954 and a PhD in 1959.

Career

From 1955 to 1959 he was a plant research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Sydney. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1959 to work with Professor Paul Stumpf in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of California, Davis.
From 1961 to 1966 Hatch worked as Research Officer in the David North Plant Research Centre at Colonial Sugar Refining Co Ltd in Brisbane with K.T. Glasziou. He was a reader in botany at the University of Queensland in 1967; he returned to CSR from 1968 to 1969 serving as director of the David North Plant Research Centre. Since 1970 he has been Chief Research Scientist at CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra.

Honours