The New International Encyclopædia/Whitman, Charles Otis

WHITMAN, Charles Otis (1842—). An American zoölogist, born in Woodstock, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin College (1868) and at Leipzig (1878). In 1880-81 he was professor of zoölogy at the Imperial University, Tokio, Japan. In 1882 he studied at the Naples Zoölogical Station. He was assistant in zoology at Harvard University from 1883 to 1885; director of the Allis Lake Laboratory at Milwaukee from 1886 to 1889; professor of zoölogy at Clark University from 1889 to 1892; and subsequently head professor of zoölogy in the University of Chicago. In 1887, in connection with Edward Allis, he founded and afterwards edited the Journal of Morphology. In 1888 he became the director of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass. His main work has been in the embryology, and he has published memoirs on the development and anatomy of certain leeches, worms, fishes, etc. He did much to advance methods of microscopical technique, including Methods of Research in Microscopical Anatomy and Embryology (1885). Among his more general researches are those entitled: The Kinetic Phenomena of the Egg During Maturation and Fecundation (Oökinesis) (1887); The Heat of Formative and Regenerative Energy (1888); Spermatophores as a Means of Hypodermic Impregnation (1891); The Inadequacy of the Cell Theory of Development (1893); Evolution and Epigenesis (1894); Animal Behavior (1898).