Alice Blanche Balfour

Alice Blanche Balfour
FRES
Born (1850-10-20)20 October 1850
Whittingehame House, East Lothian, Scotland
Died 12 June 1936(1936-06-12) (aged 85)
Whittingehame House, East Lothian, Scotland
Residence
Nationality Scottish
Scientific career
Fields entomology, genetics
Influences James Cossar Ewart

Alice Blanche Balfour FRES (20 October 1850 – 12 June 1936) was a Scottish naturalist and one of the earliest female pioneers in the science of genetics.[1]

Life

Balfour was born on 20 October 1850 at Whittingehame House in East Lothian 1850, the daughter of Lady Blanche Gascoyne-Cecil (1825–1872) and James Maitland Balfour.[1][2][3][4] She lived much of her adult life in London[5] with her brother Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. Her brother Francis Maitland Balfour 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.[6]

In 1895 she published the book Twelve Hundred miles in a Waggon[7] which describes a trip taken by herself, H. W. Fitzwilliam, Albert Grey and his wife, and Albert Grey's cousin George Grey.[8]

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London on 7 June 1916.

Balfour died on 12 June 1936 at Wittingehame House.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 Opitz, Donald L. "“Behind folding shutters in Whittingehame House”: Alice Blanche Balfour (1850–1936) and amateur natural history." Archives of Natural History 31, no. 2 (2004): 330–348. doi:10.3366/anh.2004.31.2.330
  2. ↑ 1851 England Wales and Scotland Census for Whittingham House, Whittingehame, Dunbar, Haddingtonshire (East Lothian), Scotland (subscription required)
  3. ↑ "Death at 86 of Miss Alice Balfour". The Telegraph. London. 13 June 1936. Retrieved 22 August 2014. (subscription required)
  4. 1 2 "MISS ALICE BLANCHE BALFOUR. (1936, Jun 13)". The Scotsman. 13 June 1936. p. 14.
  5. ↑ 1911 Census of England Wales and Scotland - St Martins in the Field, London
  6. ↑ "New Strides, Old Stripes: Zebras and the tsetse fly". ed.ac.uk. 5 May 2014.
  7. ↑ "Yesterday's New Books". The Standard. 12 December 1895.
  8. ↑ Balfour, Alice Blanche (1896). Twelve Hundred Miles in a Waggon (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.