Albert Francis Blakeslee

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American botanist and geneticist (1874–1954)

Blakeslee was born at Geneseo in New York State and educated at the Wesleyan University, Connecticut, graduating in 1896. He taught science for four years before entering Harvard to do post-graduate research, gaining his PhD in 1904. In this year he discovered that the bread molds (Mucorales) exhibit heterothallism (self sterility) and spent the next two years in Germany making further investigations on the fungi.

From 1907 to 1914 Blakeslee was professor of botany at Connecticut Agricultural College. In 1915 he moved to the department of genetics at the Carnegie Institution, where he remained until 1941. In 1924 he began work on the alkaloid colchicine, which is found in the autumn crocus, and 13 years later he discovered that plants soaked in this alkaloid had multiple sets of chromosomes in their cells. Such plants, termed polyploids, often exhibit gigantism and this discovery proved of immediate use in the horticultural industry in producing giant varieties of popular ornamentals. More importantly, however, colchicine often converts sterile hybrids into fertile polyploids and is therefore an invaluable tool in crop-breeding research.

Other contributions made by Blakeslee to plant genetics include his study of inheritance in the jimson weed and his research on embryo culture as a method of growing hybrid embryos that would abort if left on the parent plant.

Albert Francis Blakeslee
Albert Francis Blakeslee
Born	9 November 1874 Geneseo, New York
Died	16 November 1954
Nationality	American
Fields	botanist
Institutions	Carnegie Institution
Alma mater	Harvard University
Known for	jimsonweed

Albert Francis Blakeslee (9 November 1874 – 16 November 1954) was an American botanist. He is best known for his research on the poisonous jimsonweed plant and the sexuality of fungi.

Born in Geneseo, New York, Blakeslee attended Wesleyan University, graduating in 1896. He received a master's degree from Harvard University in 1900 and a doctorate in 1904. He also studied at the University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany from 1904 to 1907.

He was a leading figure in the genetics world in the decades before and after World War I. He worked with various plant and animal species, but finally decided on Datura. To farmers it was a stinking, noxious weed. In fact some people were seriously poisoned when they ate tomatoes grown from a scion that had been grafted onto a Jimson weed stock. But to Blakeslee Datura was “the very best plant with which to discover the principles of heredity.”^[1]

His first professorship was at the Connecticut Agricultural College, now known as the University of Connecticut. He was hired by the Carnegie Institution in 1915, eventually becoming its director. In 1941, he retired from the Carnegie Institution and returned to academia, accepting a professorship at Smith College. There he performed his research on jimsonweed.

He was the brother of the Far East scholar George Hubbard Blakeslee, who had also studied in Germany at the University of Leipzig in 1902.

References

1. ^ Crow, J F (September 1997). "Birth defects, Jimson weeds and bell curves". Genetics (UNITED STATES) 147 (1): 1–6. ISSN 0016-6731. PMID 9286663. 

• Blakeslee, Albert Francis (2005) Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 1, 2005, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online
• Who's Who in New England, 1909, p. 115. Retrieved from Google Book Search.

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