J.L. Hubby

Who was J.L. Hubby?

John Lee "Jack" Hubby was an American geneticist, pioneer of gel electrophoresis and co-author with Richard Lewontin of foundational studies in the field of molecular evolution.

After earning a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1959, Hubby took a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago, followed a faculty position there. In the early 1960s, he developed new applications for gel electrophoresis. He applied the technique to identify different version of the same protein in fruit flies. Hubby collaborated with Lewtontin to produce two breakthrough papers in 1966 that used electrophoresis to determine the level of genetic variation in natural populations of Drosophila pseudoobscura. Their studies revealed high levels of heterozygosity relative to the predictions of most evolutionary theorists.

Hubby died in 1996, aged 64.