Charles Burnham (geneticist)

Charles Burnham was an American plant geneticist who played a critical role in developing a blight resistant strain of the American chestnut.

Burnham received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1929. He was a National Research Fellow at Cornell, Harvard, and the California Institute of Technology from 1929 to 1938, and a professor at the University of Minnesota from 1938 to 1972. Burnham died in 1995.

Burnham cofounded The American Chestnut Foundation in 1983.

A letter Burnham wrote in 1983 shows his ongoing conversation with Barbara McClintock.