Researching John Cairns

Cairns received his M.D. from Oxford. He then worked as a virologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia and at the Virus Research Institute at Entebbe, Uganda. He returned to Australia to work in the School of Microbiology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research. Cairns took a sabbatical to research at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory between 1960 and 1961, and returned there to serve as the director from 1963 to 1968. He remained a staff member at Cold Spring Harbor until 1972, when he was appointed head of the Mill Hill Laboratory of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. After leaving Mill Hill in 1980 he took up a professorship at the Harvard School of Public Health. He retired in 1991.

In his 1963 paper "The bacterial chromosome and its manner of replication as seen by autoradiography", Cairns demonstrated by autoradiography that the DNA of the bacterium Escherichia coli was a single molecule that is replicated at a moving locus (the replicating fork) at which both new DNA strands are being synthesized. Subsequently, it was found that there were in fact two moving forks, traveling simultaneously in opposite directions around the chromosome.

In 1974 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1981, John Cairns received a MacArthur Foundation ("genius") Fellowship. He is the author of the 1978 book Cancer: Science and Society (now out of print) and the 1997 book, Matters of Life and Death: Perspectives on Public Health, Molecular Biology, Cancer, and the Prospects for the Human Race. Together with James Watson and Gunther Stent, Cairns also edited the collection of historical accounts Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology.

Following a career as a solicitor, he studied theology and was ordained in 1974. His first charge was as minister at the parishes of Langholm, Ewes and Westerkirk. He then became minister at Riverside Parish Church, Dumbarton (1985-2001). He then served as minister of Aberlady and Gullane Parish Churches, East Lothian, until retiring in 2008. In retirement, he is serving (as of 2011) as part-time locum minister at St Columba's Church, London. His formal title (following the end of his Moderatorial year) is the Very Reverend Dr John Cairns.

He was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1999-2000 and was appointed Chaplain to the Queen in 1997. He became Dean of the Chapel Royal in Scotland in 2006. He has also held convenerships of several General Assembly boards and committees.

The General Assembly over which he moderated was uniquely held in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. This was to allow the Scottish Parliament to meet in the Church's Assembly Hall.

Born at Choppington in Northumberland, Cairns worked as a coal miner and became active in the Northumberland Miners' Association. He was elected as the full-time financial secretary of the union, also serving as secretary of the Joint Committee in the Northumberland Coal Trade, and President of the Northumberland Aged Mine Workers' Homes Association.

In his spare time, Cairns was active in the Primitive Methodist movement, and wrote books including Money and Economics of Industry.

Cairns was a supporter of the Labour Party, for which he was elected in Morpeth in 1918. He served until his death, in 1923.