Dr Robert Michael Moor

Robert was the middle child of  Donald and Gwendolen nee Whitby and brought up at Avalon, a South African dairy and arable farm. He was educated in Estcourt where he boarded from the age of 5 to 18, his final year spent as head boy. At the senior school the academic standards were high due to an exceptional headmaster, discipline was strictly enforced with the cane and rugby and cricket given high priority. After the completion of his schooling Robert underwent officer training in the Artillery and was awarded the sword of honour. With a ten percent accidental death rate during the training, they learnt to fire heavy artillery with accuracy over 6 miles.

He went to Pietermartizburg University and studied Animal Science for four years.He enjoyed the challenges of climbing in  the Drakensberg Mountains  and tested himself and other with rock and rope. George Hunter, a lecturer fresh from Cambridge involved him in experiments to transport sheep eggs transcontinentally and this fanned the flames of his scientific curiosity. After university Robert embarked on a  northern hemisphere grand tour before marrying his fiancé Felicia Stephens who was his wife for sixty years.

The plan to settle back farming went awry when he attended a meeting in Cambridge and presented the work on the transcontinental embryo transfer experiments. Over a cup of tea he was offered a PhD position at the Animal Research Station , ARS, in Cambridge and thus his future changed. His understanding parents  gave their blessing and so instead of farming Bob developed a fascination for how the early fetus signals its presence to the mother and how a new ovulation is initiated if conception fails. Answers to these questions provided Bob with a doctorate, a tenured position at the Animal Research Station and entry into the scientific community which in the 1960s was beyond compare. For a young biologist there can never have been a better time or place to start a scientific career!

Bob spent the 1960s investigating how the ovary, embryo and uterus interact with each other. Focussing on follicular biology offered possibility of uncovering a new route to obtain large supply of eggs for transfer.follicles are the precursors of the corpus luteum and thereby provide a direct link to the ongoing work of the embryo-uterus-ovarian axis.most follicles undergo degeneration and this provided an ideal model  to study the then newly recognised phenomenon of programmed cell  death. By the end of the decade the group had unraveled some of the ways in which follicles function and had shown how large numbers of eggs can be produced and fertilised in vitro.

These advances, in turn, provided the foundation for studies that were to occupy Bob for the remainder of his scientific career. The studies included work in the molecules that enable chromosomes to separate at meiosis, understanding the means by which oocytes carry out internal audits for chromosomal errors during division, investigating how follicle cells signal between themselves and with the oocyte, and working on the translational mechanisms that control protein synthesis in the oocyte and embryo. Being in a vibrant scientific community enabled him to collaborate on diverse work from  freezing embryos, the immunological peculiarities of chimeric sheep to  stem cell behaviour in the gut.