Florence Margaret Durham (6 April 1869 – 25 June 1949) was a British geneticist at Cambridge in the early 1900s and an advocate of the theory of Mendelian inheritance, at a time when it was still controversial.

[4] In 1891 and 1892, Florence Durham achieved second class honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos Part I and II (physiology) at Girton College.

[2] Towards the end of the 19th century, female students were still facing resistance from Cambridge academics, including a move by some scientists to prevent them from taking introductory biology courses.

[2][6] Florence Durham, Edith Rebecca "Becky" Saunders and Muriel Wheldale performed work to show that complex traits could be explained by Mendel's law of segregation.

[2] The term "epistasis" was coined by William Bateson, and Durham invoked it to explain how genes could interact in a more complex way than the simple dominant and recessive characteristics identified by Gregor Mendel.

[2] In 1910, she moved to the new John Innes Horticultural Institute in Surrey where Bateson had accepted a position as director to work with him on plant genetics, including a study of tetraploid primrose hybrids.

She and her colleague Miss Marchal were responsible for ensuring that preparations of neosalvarsan met the quality standard[8] and issuing licences on behalf of the Board of Trade.

[9] The study was done in response to reports by American researcher Charles Rupert Stockard that the offspring of alcohol-exposed guinea pigs exhibited defects attributable to the parents' alcohol exposure.