Walter Sutton

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Walter Stanborough Sutton (April 5, 1877 - November 10, 1916) was an American geneticist whose most significant contribution to present-day biology was his theory that the Mendelian laws of inheritance could be applied to chromosomes at the cellular level of living organisms. This is now known as the Boveri-Sutton chromosome theory.

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[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

he was born at Utica, New York, was raised in Russell, Kansas, received Bachelor and Master degrees from the University of Kansas. He adopted Ben and Sam Kiley, who were African American, and they attended the Fessenden School in 1903. Sutton then attended Columbia University and obtained his doctorate in medicine, an M.D., in 1907.

[edit] Career

The German biologist Theodor Boveri independently reached the same conclusions as Sutton, and their concepts, often referred to as the Boveri-Sutton chromosome theory, remained controversial in the biological world until 1915, when Thomas Hunt Morgan made the theory universally accepted through his studies of Drosophila melanogaster.

[edit] References