Edmund Beecher Wilson
1856–1939
American embryologist, cytologist, and geneticist. Educated at Antioch College, Ohio, Chicago, and Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. PhD, Johns Hopkins, 1881. Visited Cambridge, Leipzig, and Naples, 1882–3. Professor of zoology, Columbia University, 1891–1928. In embryology, he worked on determining cell lineage and the use of mesoderm formation to establish homologies in early embryonic development. Published his seminal work, The cell in development and inheritance, in 1896. Studied the role of chromosomes and cytoplasmic influence in inheritance and showed that sex was determined chromosomally.
Sources
ANB
DSB
Bibliography
ANB: American national biography. Edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. 24 vols. and supplement. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999–2002.
DSB: Dictionary of scientific biography. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie and Frederic L. Holmes. 18 vols. including index and supplements. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970–90.