Hilda Nanette Blanche Praeger Killby (1877-1962) was a British geneticist who investigated heredity in goats[1] and worked with William Bateson[2] and Edith Rebecca Saunders in the early days of the study of genetics.
From 1898 to 1901, Killby studied at Newnham College, Cambridge graduating with a 2:1 honours in Part 1 of the Natural Sciences Tripos.
Over her career Killby assisted Bateson in his undertaking to reproduce of one of Mendel's original heredity experiments, performing a large number of crosses in peas.
Killby assisted both Bateson and Becky Saunders in their hybridisation experiments in the Cambridge Botanic Gardens, and worked at the John Innes Horticultural Institution during the First World War, so many ‘gardeners having gone off to make munitions'.
In 1919, Hilda Killby became one of the founding members of the Genetical Society, formed by Bateson and Saunders.