Leslie Barnett

Leslie Barnett (born 12 October 1920 as Margaret Leslie Collard – died 10 February 2002) was a British biologist who worked with Francis Crick, Sydney Brenner, and Richard J. Watts-Tobin to genetically demonstrate the triplet nature of the code of protein translation through the Crick, Brenner, Barnett, Watts-Tobin et al. experiment of 1961, which discovered frameshift mutations; this insight provided early elucidation of the nature of the genetic code.

In her professional life, Barnett was a microbiologist who joined the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where she worked as an assistant mainly with Crick and later Brenner, with whom she remained for many years until he left and she retired. During this long period, Barnett was involved in a number of the important 20th-century advances made in molecular biology and genetics.