Reginald Punnett

Professor Reginald Crundall Punnett FRS (20 June 1875 – 3 January 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.^[1] 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.^[2]

A Punnett square

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 would not 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 egg-production, early identification of male chicks, which were destroyed or separated for fattening, meant that limited animal-feed and other resources could be used more efficiently. 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

Plate from Punnett's Mimicry in Butterflies

• Punnett, R. C. (1901). Lineus. London: Williams and Norgate. http://books.google.com/books?id=YwZMAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=punnett&as_brr=1#PPR3,M2. Retrieved 2008-05-11. 

• Punnett, R. C. (1905). Mendelism. Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes. - A scanned copy of the second edition is here.

• Punnett, Reginald Crundall (1915). Mimicry in Butterflies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://www.archive.org/details/mimicryinbutterf032721mbp. Retrieved 2008-05-11. 

• Heredity in Poultry (1923)

Notes

1. ^ Punnett, Reginald Crundall in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2. ^ Dates given in "World of Biology". Thomson Gale. 2005. http://www.bookrags.com/biography/r-c-punnett-wob/. 

Further reading

• Crew, F. A. (Jan 1968). "R. C. Punnett". Genetics 58 (1): pp. 1–7. ISSN 0016-6731. PMID 4872161. 

• Hutt, F. B. (Jul 1970). "Professor R. C. Punnett". World's poultry science journal 26 (3): pp. 696–700. ISSN 0043-9339. PMID 4917050. 

• Vijayraghavan, K. (2006). "Punnett and duck genetics". Journal of Genetics 85 (1): pp. 3–7. 2006 Apr. PMID 16809833. 

External links

• A brief biographical sketch of Punnett
• A briefer biographical sketch of Punnett
• A brief history of the University of Cambridge's Department of Genetics

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