Walter Sutton - Columbia University

Columbia University

Considering the advice of his mentor at KU, Dr. C. E. McClung, Sutton moved to Columbia University for further study of zoology under Dr. Edmund B. Wilson. It was here that Sutton wrote his two significant works in genetics – “On the morphology of the chromosome group in Brachystola magna” and “The chromosomes in heredity”. Effectively, Sutton could now explain “why the yellow dog is yellow”.

The German biologist Theodor Boveri independently reached the same conclusions as Sutton, and their concepts are often referred to as the Boveri-Sutton chromosome theory. Sutton’s hypothesis was widely accepted by most scientists, particularly cytologists, at the time. The continued work of Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia brought the theory to universal acceptance by 1915 through his studies of Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly, even as William Bateson continued to question the theory until 1921.

Sutton did not complete his PhD in Zoology as he originally planned. At the age of 26, he returned to the Kansas oil fields for 2 years. There he was able to perfect a device to start large gas engines with high pressure-gas and develop hoisting apparatuses for deep wells. Sutton’s mechanical aptitudes never left him. His father finally directed him to return to his medical studies and he did so returning to Columbia University in 1905.

Sutton’s medical studies proceeded through the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. While he continued to work on patents associated with oil drilling, Sutton also began at this stage to apply his mechanical aptitude to improving medical instruments. With credit for his graduate studies at both the University of Kansas and Columbia University, Sutton obtained his doctorate in medicine in 1907 graduating with “high standing”. He then began an internship at Roosevelt Hospital in New York working in the surgical division headed by Dr. Joseph Blake.