Edmund B. Wilson was a biologist and zoologist.

Wilson was "among the most important and prolific biologists in the last part of the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth centuries" (Garland Allen). His scientific career may be divided into three major portions. In the first part, 1879-1891, he was concerned with descriptive embryology, morphology, and cell lineage. The second period, 1891-1903, was devoted to experimental embryology, differentiation, and artificial parthenogenesis. In the third part of his career, 1903-1938, Wilson concentrated on the problems of the cellular basis of heredity. Following the line of development of his mentor in Europe, Theodor Boveri, Wilson was concerned with the importance of the chromosomes in heredity. He worked on the prelocalization of formative substances in the egg, on chromosome movements, on spindle formation, on the independence and replication of the chromosomes. His graduate student, Walter S. Sutton, in 1902, on the basis of his studies of the chromosomes in a locust, set forth the basic postulates of the chromosome theory of heredity. After McClung had discovered the existence of sex chromosomes in 1902 but failed to determine the precise way in which they acted, Wilson, at first alone and then in collaboration with Nettie Stevens, worked out the chromosomal distinctions in many different species of insects, some with XY males and others with XO males. Wilson discovered the occasional non-disjunction of the X and Y chromosomes during meiosis, found cytological evidence of crossing over between homologous chromosomes during their synapsis, and was intrigued by the extra-chromosomal inheritance of organelles. His masterpiece was the third edition of The Cell in Inheritance and Development, which summarized and critically evaluated the enormous amount of research done on the cell in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Wilson's papers do not appear to have been preserved, except for these fragments of records from his graduate courses at Columbia University. Those records, however, and his comments on individual students who later became recognized, or even famous, biologists, are invaluable. The notebooks show what careful work in dissection and observation and what elegant drawing were characteristic of Wilson in his early graduate study.

Physical description

4 volumes.

Provenance

Presented by John A. Moore and accessioned, 12/10/1970 (1970 2048-51ms).

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics Note

Genetics Note

• Columbia University. -- Dept. of Zoology -- Students.
• Yale University -- Students.

• Journals (notebooks).
• Laboratory notebooks.
• Sketches.

• Anatomy -- Study and teaching.
• Zoology -- Study and teaching.