William Ernest CastleDied 3 Jun 1962 at age 94 (born 25 Oct 1867). William Earnest Castle was an American biologist and geneticist who was one of the earliest experimental geneticists. Castle's interest in natural history began as a youth growing up on a farm. From 1897, he was a biology instructor at Harvard. In 1901, he was the first to adopt a variety of the fruit fly, Drosophilia for experiments because of its advantage of quick breeding. He took an interest in Mendel's ideas, extended Mendel's Laws to mammals, and made a connection with Darwin's ideas on natural selection. |