EDMUND BEECHER WILSON, 



Second President (1905-06) of the Society for Experi- 

 mental Biology and Medicine. 

 Edmund Beecher Wilson, professor of zoology at Columbia 

 University, was born in Geneva, Illinois, October 19, 1856. After 

 graduating from Yale College in 1878 with the degree of Ph.B., 

 he spent three years at Johns Hopkins University, obtaining the 

 Ph.D. degree in 1882. After devoting a year to study at Cam- 

 bridge, Leipsic and Naples, he was lecturer in biology successively 

 at Williams College and at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology, and was then called to Bryn Mawr College. Here he 

 was for six years professor of biology, leaving this position for 

 the chair which he has held for the past fifteen years at Columbia 

 University. 



Brought up in the country Professor Wilson early learned to 

 know and to appreciate the things of nature, and developed a love 

 for the common forms of animals and plants, which has never been 

 lost in his later scientific work. In this he has not been satisfied 

 with what may be termed the old-time problems of zoology ; nor 

 with petty details of technique ; nor with the methods of the library 

 naturalist. From the very outset of his scientific work his interests 

 have centered in animals as living things. This has been the 

 underlying factor in studies on development which he carried on 

 for more than twenty years after obtaining his doctorate, and is still 

 the fundamental principle underlying his researches on problems 

 connected with the cell. His publications in the field of general 

 zoology, as ordinarily understood, belong to the earlier period of 

 his work, but they represent interests which, although subsidiary 

 to those more absorbing ones which later claimed his attention, have 

 never been given up. These later interests showed themselves 

 first in his investigations on the history of the cleavage cells in the 

 early stages of embryological development, some of which were 

 published before he had taken his doctor's degree ; and these 

 papers gave evidence of the tendency, even at this early period, to 

 turn to the cell for the ultimate analysis of vital phenomena. 



5 (i75) 



