Alice Blanche Balfour

Alice Blanche Balfour was a Victorian naturalist and one of the earliest female pioneers in the science of genetics.

She was the daughter of James Maitland Balfour and was born in 1851[1] in Dunbar where she died 86 years later in 1936.[2] She lived much of her adult life in London [3] with her brother Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour who was at one time Prime Minister of Britain. Another of her brothers was Francis Maitland Balfour who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 27 for his work on embryology.

She developed a lifelong interest in entomology and later developed an interest in genetics and in particular the way that the patterns in Zebra skins were inherited . She had a lengthy correspondence with James Cossar Ewart Professor of Zoology at University of Edinburgh who himself had a professional interest in the development of the Horse. The correspondence relates to the possibility of cross-breeding Zebra with horses to reduce the impact of Tsetse fly on horses in Africa.[4]

In 1895 she published the book "Twelve Hundred miles in a Waggon"[5]

References

  1. ↑ 1851 England Wales and Scotland Cenus for Whittingham House, Whittingehame, Dunbar, Haddingtonshire (East Lothian), Scotland (subscription required)
  2. ↑ "Death at 86 of Miss Alice Balfour". The Telegraph (London). 13 June 1936. Retrieved 22 August 2014. (subscription required)
  3. ↑ 1911 Census of England Wales and Scotland - St Martins in the Field, London
  4. ↑ New Stripes Old Stripes - Zebras and the tsetse fly
  5. ↑ "Yesterday's New Books". The Standard. 12 December 1895.