Raymond Carl Jackson (May 7, 1928, Medora, Indiana – April 7, 2008, Lubbock, Texas)[1] was an American botanist, known as Ray Jackson, noted "for his work in cytogenetics, particularly on polyploidy, and for his discovery of low chromosome numbers in angiosperms.
In New Mexico he studied the dessert annual Xanthisma gracile (synonym Haplopappus gracilis) and found that it has "n=2 chromosomes, the lowest number ever reported for a plant.
[1] In 1971 Jackson become the chair of the department of biological sciences at Texas Tech University.
[3] In the 1980’s Ray became an authority on chromosome pairing behavior in polyploids, proposing and testing models based on random synapsis and non-random distribution of chiasmata.
He also proposed similar models for predicting meiotic behavior in translocation heterozygotes.