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ABSTRACT R. C. Punnett, the codiscoverer of linkage with W. Bateson in 1904, had the good fortune to be invited to be the first Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics at Cambridge University, United Kingdom, in 1912 when Bateson, for whom it had been intended, declined to leave his new appointment as first Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institute. We here celebrate the centenary of the first professorship dedicated to genetics, outlining Punnett's career and his scientific contributions, with special reference to the discovery of "partial coupling" in the sweet pea (later "linkage") and to the diagram known as Punnett's square. His seeming reluctance as coauthor with Bateson to promote the reduplication hypothesis to explain the statistical evidence for linkage is stressed, as is his relationship with his successor as Arthur Balfour Professor, R. A. Fisher. The background to the establishment of the Professorship is also described.
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THE centenary of the foundation of Cambridge University's Professorship of Genetics in 1912 provides a timely occasion to recall the contributions of its first holder, Reginald Crundall Punnett (1875-1967; Figure 1). Overshadowed by his senior colleague William Bateson (1861- 1926), for whom the Professorship had been intended, and his successor R. A. Fisher (1890-1962), Punnett played an important role in the early days of Mendelian genetics. He wrote the first genetics textbook Mendelism (Punnett 1905), collaborated in the discovery of partial coupling (linkage), asked G. H. Hardy the question that led to the formulation of what became known as Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, published Mimicry in Butterflies (Punnett 1915) and Heredity in Poultry (Punnett 1923a), and pioneered the use of sexlinked markers for sexing poultry chicks. He founded the Journal of Genetics with Bateson in 1911 and edited it alone after Bateson's death. He was the first Secretary and was later President of the Genetical Society of Great Britain. His name is immortalized in "Punnett's square" (Figure 2).
F. A. E. Crew (Crew 1967) wrote Punnett's biographical memoir for the Royal Society, to which Punnett was elected in 1912, and followed this with a shorter account for GENETICS (Crew 1968). In the opening paragraph of the latter he said that Punnett "had the good fortune to be an active participant in the work that...