Dunn was born inBuffalo, New York, in 1893, to Clarence Leslie Dunn and Mary Eliza Booth Dunn.[3] He earned a bachelor's degree fromDartmouth College in 1915.[3]
Dunn, along with colleagueE. W. Sinnott, was the author of one of the foremost early genetics texts,Principles of Genetics (first published in 1925).[3]
Dunn was married to Louise Porter, aSmith College graduate, and the couple had two children, Robert Leslie Dunn (b. 1921) and Stephen Porter Dunn (b. 1928).[2] Dunn and his family loved literature and poetry, as did Dunn's mother,[3] and established a press (Coalbin Press) to publish occasional volumes of poetry.[2] The younger son,Stephen, was asocial anthropologist and writer, publishing books such asThe Peasants of Central Russia (1967) andIntroduction to Soviet Ethnography (1974) (with his wife Ethel Deikman Dunn),Cultural Processes in the Baltic Area Under Soviet Rule (1966), and edited, translated, and taught.[2]
Dunn, L.C. 1920. "Independent Genes in Mice",Genetics, v.5, pp. 344–361.
Dunn, L.C. 1920. "Linkage in mice and rats",Genetics, v.5, pp. 325–343. (Dunn's dissertation at Harvard)
Dunn, L.C. 1957. "Evidence of evolutionary forces leading to the spread of lethal genes in wild populations of house mice",Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA v.43, pp. 158–163.
Dunn, L. C. 1959. "Heredity and Evolution in Human Populations", v.75, pp. 117–192.
Dunn, L.C. 1964. "Abnormalities associated with a chromosome region in the mouse",Science, v.144, pp. 260–263.
Dunn, L.C. and W.C. Morgan. 1952. "A mutable locus in wild populations of house mice",Am. Nat. v.86, pp. 321–323.
Dunn, L.C., H. Gruneberg, and G.D. Snell. 1940. "Report of the Committee on Mouse Genetics Nomenclature",J. Hered. v.31, pp. 505–506.
Dunn, L.C. 1951.Race and Biology: The Race Question in Modern Science (UNESCO, 1951; 3rd edition 1970)
Heredity, Race, and Society (1946; fourth edition 1972)
William deJong-Lambert,The Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair, Chapter 1, Sections 1.4: "Julian Huxley and Leslie Clarence Dunn" and 1.5 "J. B. S. Haldane, and Dunn's Visit to the Soviet Union".
