William Ernest Castle

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William Ernest Castle (born October 25, 1867 in Ohio , † June 3, 1962 in Berkeley , California ) was an American geneticist .

Live and act

William E. Castle was born on an Ohio farm, one of six children, and had a keen interest in flora and fauna as a boy. After graduating from Denison University in Granville , Ohio, he became a Latin teacher at Ottawa University in Ottawa , Kansas. Here he published his first book about the flowering plants in the area. His interest in biology led him to go to Harvard University in 1892 , where he turned to zoology . He received his doctorate in 1895 and then taught zoology for a year at the University of Wisconsin and at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.

In 1896 he married Clara Sears Bosworth, with whom he had three sons in the following years. Castle returned to Harvard in 1897 and focused on embryology . After the Mendelian rules were rediscovered in 1900 , he turned to genetics. He was the first to use the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as an object of study. His work prompted Thomas Hunt Morgan to use the flies. However, he himself turned back to mammals and worked mainly with mice, rats, rabbits and guinea pigs, which are still used as experimental animals today. In 1908 Castle moved from the Museum of Comparative Zoology to the Bussey Institute for Applied Biology in Jamaica Plain. In 1916 he was one of the ten founders of Genetics magazine .

Castle joined the University of California at the age of 70 when the Bussey Institute was closed in 1936, where he was offered a position as a researcher in mammalian genetics.

His work includes studies on the inheritance of albinism (1903) and Mendelian laws. He published 242 articles, three books, and a laboratory manual for geneticists. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1900, the American Philosophical Society in 1910, and the National Academy of Sciences in 1915 .

Works

  • [1] The publications of WE Castle (English)

literature

  • Who's Who in America: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men and Women. : Volume 28 (1954-1955). Marquis Who's Who, Chicago, Ill., 1955, p. 446.
  • Who Was Who in America With World Notables: Volume IV, 1961–1968. Marquis Who's Who, Chicago, Ill., 1968, p. 161.

Web links

  • GD Snell, S. Reed: William Ernest Castle, pioneer mammalian geneticist. In: Genetics. Volume 133, Number 4, April 1993, pp. 751-753, ISSN  0016-6731 . PMID 8462838 . PMC 1205396 (free full text).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: William E. Castle. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 25, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Castle, William Ernest
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Ohio , USA
DATE OF DEATH June 3, 1962
Place of death Berkeley , California