Ross Granville HarrisonBorn 13 Jan 1870; died 30 Sep 1959 at age 89.American zoologist who developed the first successful animal-tissue cultures and pioneered organ transplantation techniques. In an early experiment, using tissue grafting techniques, he joined parts of embryos from differently coloured frogs to observe the movement of cells during the subsequent development of the embryos produced in this way. In another experiment, he took tissue from an amphibian embryo that would have formed a left limb, inverted and transferred it to the embryo's right side, where it formed a right limb. He discovered the hanging-drop culture method (1907), a new method of studying cells, by which he kept fragments of living tissue alive in suitable media and watch them multiply. Using this technique, he settled a controversy about the embryonic origins of nerve fibres. The hanging-drop method has also been valuable in oncology, genetics, virology and other fields. |
