Everything about Reginald C Punnett totally explained
Professor
Reginald Crundall Punnett FRS (
June 20 1875 –
January 3 1967) was a
British geneticist who co-founded, with
William Bateson, the
Journal of Genetics in
1910. Punnett is probably best remembered today as the creator of the
Punnett square, a tool still used by
biologists to predict the
probability of possible
genotypes of offspring. His
Mendelism (1905) is sometimes said to have been the first textbook on genetics; it was probably the first
popular science book to introduce genetics to the public.
Life and work
Reginald Punnett was born in 1875 in the town of Tonbridge in Kent, England. While recovering from a childhood bout of appendicitis, Punnett became acquainted with Jardine's Naturalist's Library and developed an interest in natural history.
Attending
Gonville and Caius College at the
University of Cambridge, Punnett earned a degree in zoology in 1898, and a masters in 1902. Between these degrees he worked as a demonstrator and part-time lecturer at the
University of St. Andrew's Natural History Department. However, by 1902 Punnett was back at Cambridge working in zoology, primarily the study of worms, specifically
nemerteans. It was during this time that he and William Bateson began a research collaboration, which lasted several years.
When Punnett was an undergraduate,
Gregor Mendel's work on inheritance was largely unknown and unappreciated by scientists. However, in
1900, Mendel's work was rediscovered by
Carl Correns,
Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg and
Hugo de Vries. William Bateson became a proponent of
Mendelian genetics, and had Mendel's work translated into English. It was with Bateson that Reginald Punnett helped established the new
science of genetics at Cambridge. He and Bateson co-discovered
genetic linkage through experiments with chickens and pea plants.
In
1908, unable to explain how a dominant gene wouldn't become fixed and ubiquitous in a population, Punnett introduced one of his problems to the mathematician
G. H. Hardy, with whom he played
cricket. Hardy went on to formulate the
Hardy-Weinberg principle, independently of the German
Wilhelm Weinberg.
In 1910 Punnett became professor of biology at Cambridge, and then the first
Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics when Bateson left in
1912. In the same year, Punnett was elected a
Fellow of the
Royal Society. He received the society's
Darwin Medal in
1922.
During World War I, Punnett successfully applied his expertise to the problem of the early determination of gender in
chickens. Since only females were used for food, early identification of male chicks, who were destroyed, meant that more of the limited food supplies could be given to the females. Punnett's work in this area was summarized in
Heredity in Poultry (1923).
Reginald Punnett retired in
1940, and died at the age of 91 in
1967 in
Bilbrook,
Somerset.
Selected writings
- A scanned copy of the second edition is here
.
Heredity in Poultry (1923)Further Information
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