Dorothea Bennett

Dorothea Bennett (December 27, 1929 in Honolulu, Hawaii – August 16, 1990 in Houston, Texas) was a geneticist, known for the genetics of early mammalian development and for research into mammalian sperm surface structures and their role in fertilization and spermatogenesis. She was "one of the major figures in mouse developmental genetics".

Biography

She was born on Oahu, Hawaii. She earned a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1951 and a doctorate from Columbia University in 1956. She was in the Department of Zoology at Columbia from 1956 to 1962, where she worked with L. C. Dunn and visiting researcher Ann Chester Chandley. Bennett left to join Cornell University Medical College in 1962, where she remained until 1976. From 1976 to 1986 she was at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research.

Bennett moved to the University of Texas in Austin in 1986, where she was the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor and chair of the zoology department, and helped establish the graduate program in molecular biology.

Further research "Dorothea Bennett, 60, Geneticist and Teacher" (obituary), The New York Times, Aug. 18, 1990. "In Memoriam: Dorothea Bennett", University of Texas (1990) Karen Artzt, "In Memoriam Dorothea Bennett 1929–1990", Immunogenetics, v.33, n.1 (1991), pp. 1–3. DOI 10.1007/BF00211688 Theodosius Dobzhansky, Leslie Clarence Dunn, 1893-1974: A Biographical Memoir (National Academy of Sciences 1978) (significant discussion of L. C. Dunn's and Dorothea Bennett's collaborations) Lee M. Silver, "In Memoriam: Dorothea Bennett, 1929–1990", Mammalian Genome, v.1, n.2 (1991), pp. 69–70. DOI 10.1007/BF02443780 "Obituaries", The Scientist Magazine, Sept. 17, 1990. Marilyn Ogilvie and Joy Harvey, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science