Jay L. Lush

Jay Laurence Lush, born January 3, 1896, and died May 1, 1982, was an American animal geneticist often called the father of modern scientific animal breeding for replacing subjective visual assessment with breeding methods grounded in quantitative statistics and genetics. His 1937 textbook, Animal Breeding Plans, transformed livestock breeding practice worldwide; he earned a bachelor's degree in animal husbandry and a master's degree from Kansas State Agricultural College and a doctorate in genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1922, before holding the Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professorship in Agriculture at Iowa State University from 1930 to 1966. His honors included election to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1967, the National Medal of Science in 1968 and the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 1979.