author
Reginald Crundall Punnett
1875–1967
Best known for the simple grid that still helps students understand inheritance, this early geneticist also helped shape modern genetics as a field. His work linked clear teaching with important research, making big biological ideas easier to grasp.
2 Audiobooks
Mendelism Third Edition
by Reginald Crundall Punnett
Mimicry in Butterflies
by Reginald Crundall Punnett
About the author
Born in Tonbridge, England, in 1875, Reginald Crundall Punnett studied at the University of Cambridge and began his scientific career in zoology before turning to the new science of heredity. He became one of the early champions of Mendel's ideas in Britain at a time when genetics was only just taking shape.
Punnett is remembered above all for the Punnett square, the diagram used to predict how inherited traits may appear in offspring. He also worked closely with William Bateson, helping to show genetic linkage in sweet peas, and the two co-founded the Journal of Genetics in 1910. At Cambridge, Punnett went on to hold one of the first professorships in genetics.
His interests were practical as well as theoretical. In poultry breeding, he applied genetic principles to develop methods for distinguishing male and female chicks early, work that showed how genetics could be useful beyond the laboratory. He died in 1967, but his name remains familiar to generations of biology students.