Researching John Griffith

Griffith was born in Lubbock, Texas, and raised in Houston, Southern California, New Jersey, and eventually New Orleans. In Louisiana, while attending LSU in Baton Rouge, he began his professional musical career. Finding a base in New Orleans, Griffith and local friends, James Singletary and Darren Hill, founded the early punk rock band, Red Rockers. After a short but successful career highlighted by the 1983–84 MTV hits, "China" and, "Good as Gold", singles from its album Good As Gold (Columbia/415,1983), multi arena tours with U2, Joan Jett, Men at Work and B-52s, Red Rockers disbanded in early 1987....

The departure led Griffith to release his first solo album, Son of an Engineer, in 1988 on Laughing Gravy Music. After a brief stab at solo-dom, opening twice for Bob Dylan, Griffith was approached by fellow New Orleanians, Fred LeBlanc and Paul Sanchez, in fall 1990. Griffith and Sanchez were already performing as The Lonesome Travelers, in 1989.

Since 1990, Griffith has been a founding member, resident guitar slinger, vocalist, and principal songwriter for the New Orleans based rock group, Cowboy Mouth. In 2019, Cowboy Mouth will make a 29th consecutive New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest performance, and Griffith a 31st.

Known by most of his fans as "JTG" or "Griff", John Thomas Griffith was inducted into Buddy magazine's Texas Guitar Hall of Fame in 1999, joining Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Eric Johnson, and others.

When not touring with Cowboy Mouth, he performs living room concerts throughout the USA, composes and licenses music for film and TV through his company, iSourceMusic, with his side project, Black Ant King.

Griffith resides in Northern California.

Griffith was educated at Trinity College Dublin, and gained a licence in civil engineering in 1868. He served a two-year apprenticeship under Dr Bindon Blood Stoney, the Engineer in Chief of the Dublin Port and Docks, before working as assistant to the county surveyor of County Antrim. He returned to Dublin in 1871 and worked as Dr. Stoney's assistant, becoming the Chief Engineer in 1898 before retiring in 1913.

He served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in Ireland between 1887 and 1889 and of the Institution of Civil Engineers between 1919 and 1920. He was elected Commissioner of Irish Lights in 1913 and was a member of the Royal Commission on Canals and Waterways between 1906 and 1911.

Griffith purchased and drained the bogland at Pollagh, part of the Bog of Allen, a peat fuelled power station was built which drove an excavator, excess peat being taken by the Grand Canal for sale in Dublin. The site was sold to the Turf Development Board in 1936 who used it as a basis for all of their later peat fuelled power stations, the area is now a nature reserve.

Griffith received a knighthood in 1911 and became vice-president of the Royal Dublin Society in 1922. He served as Honorary Professor of Harbour Engineering in Trinity College, his alma mater, and received an honorary M.A.I. degree from the University of Dublin in 1914. From 1922 he was an elected member of the Seanad Éireann, the Irish senate, until its abolition in 1936. In the 1930s he and Sarah Purser, endowed the Purser Griffith Travelling Scholarship and the Purser Griffith Prize to the two best performing students in European Art History at University College Dublin.

He died at Rathmines Castle in Dublin on 21 October 1938.

Griffith was the son of John Griffith (of Cefnamlwch), Llyn. He matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford aged 15 on 31 October 1606 and became a member of Lincoln's Inn in 1609.

In 1618 he was appointed High Sheriff of Caernarvonshire. He was elected Member of Parliament for Carnarvonshire in 1621. He became Constable of Carnarvon Castle on 18 July 1622. In 1626 he was re-elected MP for Carnarvonshire. He became Vice Admiral of North Wales in September 1626. In 1628 he was re-elected MP for Carnarvonshire and sat until 1629 when King Charles decided to rule without parliament for eleven years. In November 1640, Griffith was elected MP for Beaumaris in the Long Parliament and sat until his death in 1642. Griffith died at the age of 51.

Griffith married May Trevor, daughter of Sir Richard Trevor of Trevalyn. His son John was also MP for Carnarvonshire in the Long Parliament.

His early work was in the inorganic chemistry of transition metal ions and ligand field theory.

During the 1960s, Griffith and radiation biologist Tikvah Alper developed the hypothesis that some transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are caused by an infectious agent consisting solely of proteins. This idea was eventually developed by Prusiner and others into the so-called prion hypothesis. In 1951, when he was just 23, at Francis Crick's suggestion, Griffith performed quantum mechanical calculations on what later became known as complementary base pairing. Griffith was the nephew of the distinguished British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith.