S3.26 *Repost* When 'Becky' met Bateson: Edith Rebecca Saunders, the mother of British plant genetics

We’re reposting some of our favourite episodes over the holiday period. Here’s a story from October 2019.

The history of genetics has a few famous partnerships - such as James Watson and Francis Crick or Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod. But there’s one pair without whom this podcast wouldn’t exist at all, and that’s Edith Rebecca Saunders and William Bateson, who founded The Genetics Society one hundred years ago.

But while Bateson tends to get the glory, particularly for his popularisation of Gregor Mendel’s ideas about heredity, much less is heard about Saunders - the ‘mother of British plant genetics’. It’s time to tell her story.

Full show notes and references here.

Photo courtesy of Newnham College Cambridge.