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.