Burt Green Wilder (August 11, 1841 – January 21, 1925) was an American
comparative anatomist
Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of different species. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny (the evolution of species).
The science began in the classical era, continuing in t ...
.
Biography
Burton Green Wilder was born in
Boston to David and Celia Colton Wilder. He graduated at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
(
Lawrence Scientific School, 1862; medical department, 1866). During part of the
Civil War he served as surgeon of the
Fifty-fifth (Negro) Massachusetts Infantry. From 1867 to his retirement in 1910 he was
professor of
neurology and
vertebrate zoölogy at
Cornell.
He was elected as a member to the
American Philosophical Society in 1878.
In 1885 he was president of the
American Neurological Association and in 1898 of the
Association of American Anatomists. While at Cornell, Wilder began what would become the
Wilder Brain Collection. He died at his home in
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts on January 21, 1925. His own brain was removed from his corpse and added to the collection.
Notably, the earliest known instance of the term
neuron was in 1884, when Wilder used the word to describe the cerebrospinal axis (also known as the
Central Nervous System). The term was popularized, and given its more modern meaning, by
Heinrich Waldeyer in 1891.
Among his writings are:
*''What Young People Should Know'' (1874)
*''Anatomical Technology'' (1882), with
Gage
*''Physiology Practicums'' (second edition, 1895)
A species of Brazilian snake, ''
Liotyphlops wilderi'', is named in his honor.
[Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Wilder", p. 285).]
References
Sources
:
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilder, Burt Green
1841 births
1925 deaths
American science writers
Cornell University faculty
People of Massachusetts in the American Civil War
Harvard Medical School alumni
Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni
Union Army surgeons