Porter, Keith R(oberts) (1912-1997)

Canadian cell biologist. A prolific author and adviser to many scientific journals, he made major advances in studies of experimental embryology and tissue culture technique.

Porter was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. He came to the USA for graduate studies (1934), and became a research fellow at Princeton (1938-39). At the Rockefeller Institute (1939-61), he adapted tissue culture cells for electron microscopy to observe the microanatomy of cellular organelles. He joined Harvard (1961-67), then the University of Colorado (1968-84). He became chairman of the biological science department at the University of Maryland (1984-88), then moved to the University of Pennsylvania (1989).