William Lawrence Tower ( 22 December

1872 Events January–March * January 12 – Yohannes IV is crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in Axum, the first ruler crowned in that city in over 500 years. * February 2 – The government of the United Kingdom buys a number of forts on ...

–

July July is the seventh month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is the fourth of seven months to have a length of 31 days. It was named by the Roman Senate in honour of Roman general Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., it being the mont ...

1967 Events January * January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair. * January 5 ** Spain and Romania sign an agreement in Paris, establishing full consular and ...

) was an American

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

, born in Halifax,

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. He was educated at the Lawrence Scientific School (Harvard), the Harvard Graduate School, and the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

( B. S., 1902), where he taught thereafter, becoming associate professor in 1911.

Research

Tower was notable for his experimental work in

heredity Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic inform ...

, investigating the

inheritance of acquired characteristics Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...

and the laws of heredity in

beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

s and publishin
''An Investigation of Evolution in Chrysomelid Beetles of the Genus Leptinotarsa''
(1906). This study is probably the first (albeit possibly discredited) of

mutation In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mi ...

in animals. He published also ''The Development of the Colors and Color Patterns of Coleoptera'' (1903) and, with Coulter,

Castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

, Davenport and

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...

, an essay on ''Heredity and Eugenics'' (1912). Tower was caught up in personal and professional scandals. He resigned from the University of Chicago in 1917 following a very public divorce, but by then he had become a source of discontent among students and faculty. His professed

atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...

caused offense to some, including graduate student

Warder Clyde Allee Warder Clyde Allee (June 5, 1885 – March 18, 1955) was an American ecologist. He is recognized to be one of the great pioneers of American ecology. Schmidt, Karl Patterson. "Warder Allee: A Biographical Memoir", National Academy of Sciences. Wa ...

. Tower caused political friction within the department and many members distrusted his professional ethics. Experimental results which Tower reported in 1906 and 1910 were found to include serious discrepancies which he declined to explain. His claim that experimental results had been lost in a fire increased his colleagues' skepticism.

William Bateson William Bateson (8 August 1861 – 8 February 1926) was an English biologist who was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscove ...

, T. D. A. Cockerell, and R. A. Gortner were particularly critical of his work. A more positive reception came from the botanist

Henry Chandler Cowles Henry Chandler Cowles (February 27, 1869 – September 12, 1939) was an American botanist and ecological pioneer (see History of ecology). A professor at the University of Chicago, he studied ecological succession in the Indiana Dunes of Northwes ...

. It was suggested that his research may have been faked. The geneticist William E. Castle who visited Tower's laboratory was not impressed by the experimental conditions. He later concluded that Tower had faked his data. Castle found the fire suspicious and also Tower's claim that a steam leak in his

greenhouse A greenhouse (also called a glasshouse, or, if with sufficient heating, a hothouse) is a structure with walls and roof made chiefly of Transparent ceramics, transparent material, such as glass, in which plants requiring regulated climatic condit ...

had destroyed all his beetle stocks.Kohler, Robert E. (2002). ''Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology''. University of Chicago Press. pp. 202-204.

Publications

''The Development of the Colors and Color Patterns of Coleoptera''
(1903)
''An Investigation of Evolution in Chrysomelid Beetles of the Genus Leptinotarsa''
(1906)
''The Mechanism of Evolution in Leptinotarsa''
(1918)

References

External links

Tower, William Lawrence, – Biodiversity Heritage Library
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tower, William Lawrence 1872 births 1967 deaths Academic scandals American eugenicists American science writers American zoologists Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni Lamarckism People from Halifax, Massachusetts People involved in scientific misconduct incidents Biology controversies University of Chicago alumni University of Chicago faculty

Research

Publications

References

Further reading

External links