Robert Heath Lock
English geneticist and botanist (1879-1915)
Robert Heath Lock (19 January 1879 – 26 June 1915) was an English botanist and geneticist who wrote the first English textbook on genetics.
Life
Robert Heath Lock was the son of John Bascombe Lock, a priest and Eton College schoolmaster who was later bursar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His younger brother was C. N. H. Lock. He was born at Eton College on 19 January 1879, and educated at Charterhouse School, where he was a member of a winning 8 at Bisley. 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. While still an undergraduate, he accompanied William Bateson abroad.
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. He returned to Cambridge in 1905 to be Curator of the Cambridge University Herbarium. He was a fellow of Caius from 1904 to 1910, taking his ScD in 1910. From 1908 to 1913 he was Assistant Director to Willis at Peradeniya, serving as Acting Director in 1909 and 1912.
“Robert Heath Lock” enters the record as english geneticist and botanist (1879-1915). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Robert, Heath and Lock can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Robert Heath Lock” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Robert, Heath and Lock provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19974836. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1915, 1902 and 1905.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Robert Heath Lock”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Robert Heath Lock primary sources, Robert Heath Lock archive and Robert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Robert Heath Lock”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Robert Heath Lock” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.