The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Whitman, Charles Otis

WHITMAN, Charles Otis, American zoologist: b. Woodstock, Me., 14 Dec. 1842; d. 6 Dec. 1910. He was graduated from Bowdoin in 1868, studied at Leipzig, and in 1880-81 was protestor of zoology at the Imperial University, Tokyo, Japan. He was engaged in further studies at the Naples Zoological Station in 1882, and in 1883-85 was assistant in zoology at Harvard. He was director of the Allis Lake Laboratory, Milwaukee, in 1886-89, and in 1889-92 professor of zoology at Clark University, Worcester, Mass. He became director of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., upon its foundation in 1888, and from 1892 until his death was at the head of the department of zoology at the University of Chicago. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1895. He founded the Journal of Morphology in 1887, and after 1883 was editor of the microscopical department of the American Naturalist. He has made a specialty of the development of the vertebrates and of the structure and development of worms. His writings include ‘Methods of Research in Microscopical Anatomy and Embryology’ (1885); ‘Biological Lectures’ (1890-95); ‘The Inadequacy of the Cell Theory of Development’ (1893); ‘Animal Behavior’ (1898), etc.