Dorothea Bennett (December 27, 1929 in Honolulu, Hawaii – August 16, 1990 in Houston, Texas) was a geneticist, known for the genetics of early mammalian development and for research into mammalian sperm surface structures and their role in fertilization and spermatogenesis.
She earned a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1951 and a doctorate from Columbia University in 1956.
[3] She was in the Department of Zoology at Columbia from 1956 to 1962, where she worked with L. C. Dunn and visiting researcher Ann Chester Chandley.
[4] Bennett left to join Cornell University Medical College in 1962, where she remained until 1976.
Bennett moved to the University of Texas in Austin in 1986, where she was the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor and chair of the zoology department, and helped establish the graduate program in molecular biology.