Edmund Beecher Wilson (
October 19, 1856 –
March 3, 1939) was a pioneering
American zoologist and
geneticist.
Wilson was born in
Geneva, Illinois, and graduated from
Yale in
1878. He earned his
doctorate at
Johns Hopkins in
1881.
He was a lecturer at
Williams College in
1883-84 and at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
1884-85. He served as
professor of
biology at
Bryn Mawr College from
1885 to
1891.
He spent the balance of his career at
Columbia University where he was successively adjunct professor of biology (
1891-94), professor of
invertebrate zoölogy (
1894-97), and professor of zoölogy beginning in 1897.
Wilson is credited as America's first
cell biologist. In
1898 he used the similarity in
embryos to describe
phylogenetic relationships. By observing spinal cleavage in
molluscs, flatworms and
annelids he concluded that the same organs came from the same group of cells and concluded that all these organisms must have a
common ancestor.
He also discovered the
chromosomal XY sex-determination system in
1905 -- that males have XY and females XX sex chromosomes.
Nettie Stevens independently made the same discovery the same year.
Professor Wilson published many papers on embryology, and served as
president of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in
1913. 
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