Download AAA Presidents - American Association of Anatomists

1910–1919
AAA Presidents
1911-1913
Ross G. Harrison
1913-1915
Gotthelf C. Huber
n 1910
International committee to revise embryological nomenclature
At the International meeting in Brussels, the AAA advocates for a committee to revise
embryological nomenclature and prepares a list of standard terms.
Discovery of genes residing on chromosomes
In the early 1900s, Gregor Mendel’s work receives renewed attention
from scientists. In 1910, Thomas Hunt Morgan shows that genes
reside on chromosomes; he later demonstrates that genes occupy
specific locations on the chromosome. With this knowledge, Morgan
and his students begin the first chromosomal map — of the fruit fly,
Drosophila. For his discoveries concerning the role played by the
chromosome in heredity, Morgan is awarded the Nobel Prize in
1933.
1915-1917
Henry H. Donaldson
1917-1920
Robert R. Bensley
“That the fundamental aspects of heredity should have turned
out to be so extraordinarily simple supports us in the hope
that nature may, after all, be entirely approachable. Her
much-advertised inscrutability has once more been found to
be an illusion due to our ignorance. This is encouraging, for,
if the world in which we live were as complicated as some of
our friends would have us believe we might well despair that
biology could ever become an exact science.”
—Thomas Hunt Morgan from The Physical Basis of Heredity
Thomas Hunt Morgan
“The evidence shows clearly
that the characters of wild
animals and plants, as well as
those of domesticated races, are
inherited both in the wild and in
domesticated forms according to
the Mendel’s Law. Evolution has
taken place by the incorporation
into the race of those mutations
that are beneficial to the life and
reproduction of the organism.”
—Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan. Drawing showing a cross
between a white eyed male and a red-eyed female
of the fruit fly.
n 1915
Leslie B. Arey joins the faculty of Northwestern
University Medical School
Arey teaches there for 72 years, one of the longest tenures
of any medical school professor in history. He publishes the
Textbook of Embryology in 1917 and Development Anatomy in
1924; both are classics in the field.
Leslie B. Arey
n 1918
George Linius Streeter
Streeter publishes a monograph on the perilymphatic spaces of the labyrinth, a subject
on which very little had previously been written. His interest in the development of the
internal ear and its nervous connections continues for many years.
Elizabeth Caroline Crosby publishes her first book
Crosby publishes Laboratory Outline of Neurology, in 1918 (with C. J. Herrick). Crosby
is arguably the most famous female American neuroanatomist of the 20th century.
In 1979 she receives the National Medal of Science from President Jimmy Carter
“for outstanding contributions to comparative and human neuroanatomy and for the
synthesis and transmission of knowledge of the entire nervous system of the vertebrate
phylum.” Crosby’s final book, Comparative Correlative Neuroanatomy of The Vertebrate
Telencephalon, is published in 1982. Her books and papers on the anatomy of the
forebrain are classics in the field.
n 1911
Thomas Dwight of Harvard Medical
School dies
Dwight is one of the founders of AAA and serves as
one of its first presidents.
n 1912
Thomas Dwight
Ross Granville Harrison
Harrison is the first to demonstrate the genesis and biological
significance of the neuron when he discovers that the neuroblast
is able to form a nerve fiber outside of the body when removed
from all sources of contamination. In “The Outgrowth of the
Nerve Fiber as a Mode of Protoplasmic Movement,” Harrison
uses hanging drop tissue cultures to show discrete cell
membranes between cells and observe the growth of individual
neurons.
Ross Granville Harrison
By discrediting the prevailing syncytial theory of nerve
development, Harrison opens the field up for new questions. The
most prominent question becomes how the neurons find their
way to target tissues and how the synapses, or junctions between
neurons, keep the nervous system connected.
Harrison’s studies exploring the growth of nerve fibers in tissue culture earn him
a nomination for the Nobel Prize in 1917. He is the first American zoologist to be
nominated, but because the Karolinska Institute rules that no awards be made in
Physiology and Medicine during World War I (1914-18), no prize is awarded that year.
In 1913, Harrison is elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American
Philosophical Society. He founds the Journal of Experimental Zoology and serves as its
managing editor from 1903-1946.
George Linius Streeter
Elizabeth Caroline Crosby
n 1919
Charles Bardeen
Bardeen demonstrates a simple method of injecting blood vessels so as to reveal them in
Roentgenograms at the 35th meeting of the AAA. The transformative technique produces
stereoscopic Roentgenograms of the vascular supply of some of the joints.
Charles Bardeen in lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
Different Types of Neurons based on reconstructions and drawings by Cajal.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the
most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most
adaptable to change. I have called this principle, by which
each slight variation, if useful, is preserved,
by the term of Natural Selection.”
—Charles Darwin
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882. On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection. London : John Murray, 1859.
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