Kathleen Bever Blackburn

Kathleen Bever Blackburn, (1892–1968) was a British botanist best remembered for the 1923 discovery that plant cells have sex chromosomes. She taught botany at Armstrong College, Durham University (later renamed King's College, now Newcastle University) from 1918 to 1957.

She studied at Bedford College, University of London, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in 1912 and a Master of Science (MSc) degree in 1914. her head of department at Armstrong College, 1927–1946. Her first published work, in 1917, was an anatomical study of vascular tissue in seedlings of the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae and others.

Papers in 1921, 1924 and 1925 explored the chromosome complements of British roses (Rosa species). In these, she showed that the basal number of chromosomes in the nucleus of the cells of roses is seven, that different forms of roses were in fact polyploids arising by hybridisation, and that examination of the chromosomes was a means of clarifying taxonomic relationships. Her work on roses made her reputation, at home and abroad. A suffragette magazine, The Women’s Leader (1924) said: "Botanical research is another field in which women will be represented ... Sir Frederick Keeble paid a glowing tribute ... [Blackburn] had solved the well nigh insoluble riddle of cross-fertilization of the rose". and later, unusually for the time, drove her own car. She went on botanical expeditions to isolated islands in the Hebrides. She appears never to have married, and seems to have lived in the family home in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, at least in later years, with her sister, Dorothy. of Parkinson's disease, which had started before she retired.

Selected works