Herbert Spencer Jennings Scientist
Herbert Spencer Jennings (born in Tonica, Illinois, April 8, 1868; died in Santa Monica, California, April 14, 1947) was a zoologist, geneticist, and eugenicist. His research helped demonstrate the link between physical and chemical stimulation and automatic responses in lower orders of animals. Tracy Sonneborn would later write:Jennings was so struck by the continued production of hereditarily diverse clones at conjugation, even after many successive inbreedings, that he undertook to examine the matter mathematically. As a result, general formulae for the results of diverse systems of mating were published in a series of papers between 1912 and 1917; these were one of the main seeds from which the whole field of mathematical genetics developed.In 1924, Jennings published an article in Scientific Monthly on "Heredity and Environment" which was prescient for anticipating the double helix, and provocatively liberal for its comments on racial differences and American immigration policy. (The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Sept., 1924), pp. 225-238)
