Robert Heath Lock

He was Frank Smart Student of Botany at Gonville & Caius, where he graduated with a first class degree in the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1902.[1] In 1902 he was appointed Scientific Assistant to the Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Peradeniya in Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon), under John Christopher Willis.[1][6] It has been described as the first English textbook on genetics and was widely admired in America and the United Kingdom, however was essentially forgotten after World War I.[7][8] In 1908, Alfred Russel Wallace wrote supportively about the textbook: In conclusion, I would suggest to those of my readers who are interested in the great questions associated with the name of Darwin, but who have not had the means of studying the facts either in the field or the library, that in order to obtain some real comprehension of the issue involved in the controversy now going on they should read at least one book on each side.The first I would recommend is a volume by Mr. R. H. Lock on “Variation, Heredity and Evolution” (1906) as the only recent book giving an account of the whole subject from the point of view of the Mendelians and Mutationists.[9]A.