| Albert Francis Blakeslee | |
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Albert Francis Blakeslee and Sophia A. Satina
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| Born | November 9, 1874 Geneseo, New York |
| Died | November 16, 1954 |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | botanist |
| Institutions | Carnegie Institution |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Known for | jimsonweed |
Albert Francis Blakeslee (November 9, 1874 – November 16, 1954) was an American botanist. He is best known for his research on the poisonous jimsonweed plant and the sexuality of fungi.
Born in Geneseo, New York, Blakeslee attended Wesleyan University, graduating in 1896. He received a master's degree from Harvard University in 1900 and a doctorate in 1904. He also studied at the University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany from 1904 to 1907.
Blakeslee used the jimsonweed plant as a model organism for his genetic research.
Blakeslee was a leading figure in the genetics world in the decades before and after World War I. He worked with various plant and animal species, but finally decided on Datura. To farmers it was a stinking, noxious weed. In fact some people were seriously poisoned when they ate tomatoes grown from a scion that had been grafted onto a Jimson weed stock. But to Blakeslee Datura was “the very best plant with which to discover the principles of heredity.”[1]
His first professorship was at the Connecticut Agricultural College, now known as the University of Connecticut. He was hired by the Carnegie Institution in 1915, eventually becoming its director. In 1941, he retired from the Carnegie Institution and returned to academia, accepting a professorship at Smith College. There he performed his research on jimsonweed.
He was the brother of the Far East scholar George Hubbard Blakeslee, who had also studied in Germany at the University of Leipzig in 1902.