Frank Rattray Lillie
Frank Rattray Lillie (born June 27, 1870 in Toronto , † November 5, 1947 in Chicago ) was a Canadian-American zoologist and embryologist .
Lillie studied at the University of Toronto with a focus on endocrinology and embryology and went to the USA in 1891 because he worked regularly at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole (Massachusetts) in the summer . He continued his studies at Clark University (with Charles Otis Whitman ) and the University of Chicago , where he received his doctorate in zoology in 1894. He was then an instructor at the University of Michigan and from 1899 professor of biology at Vassar College . In 1900 he became Assistant Professor of Zoology at the University of Chicago and in 1906 Professor of Embryology. He was there from 1910 to 1931 from the Faculty of Zoology (as the successor to Charles Otis Whitman). In 1900 he became Assistant Director and 1908 (as the successor to Whitman) director of the MBL, which he remained until 1925 when he became Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the MBL.
In 1895 he married Frances Williams Crane, whom he had met at the MBL. She was the daughter of wealthy Chicago businessman Richard T. Crane and Lillie was able to organize financial support for the MBL from his wife's family. In 1925, with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, he succeeded in obtaining funding for the establishment of the Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole (1930). He was its first president (until 1939).
In 1933 Lillie was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 1935 to 1939 he was President of the National Academy of Sciences , to which he was elected in 1915. In 1934 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1939 he received their Alexander Agassiz Medal . In 1935/36 he was the National Research Council.
Among other things, he recognized the role of sex hormones in the differentiation of cells in the embryo and thus explained the occurrence of cows without sexual organs ( freemartinism ) by the fact that they had a male twin in the placenta with whom they shared sex hormones (published in Science 1917) .
literature
- BH Willier: Frank Rattray Lillie 1870–1947 , Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Sciences, 1957
Individual evidence
- ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed January 1, 2020 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lillie, Frank Rattray |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian-American zoologist and embryologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 27, 1870 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Toronto |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 5, 1947 |
| Place of death | Chicago |