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Why do we love Nettie?
Nettie Maria Stevens was the daughter of Ephraim Stevens, a general handyman and carpenter. After spending 13 years as a teacher, she felt that there had to be more to life and decided to go back to school where she discovered she had a gift for science and went on to recieve a B.A. from Stanford University. Her most important research and discovery would come while she was a research associate and professor at Bryn Mawr College. As is often typical with early ground-breaking scientific discoveries by women, they weren't widely accept until corroborated by a man and such was the case with Nettie's discovery of the genetic code or "X" and "Y" chromosomes that determines sex of humans and ended the scientific debate as to whether sex was determined by heredity or other factors.
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Biography:
Born - July 7, 1861
Cavendish, Vermont
Died - May 4, 1912
Baltimore, Maryland
Achievements:
- Received a B.A from Stanford University in 1899 and an M.A in 1900
- Received a PhD from Bryn Mawr in 1903
- Studied at the Zoological Station in Naples, Italy and the Zoological Institute of the University of Würzburg, Germany
- Published 40 research papers between 1903-1912
- In 1905 published a paper detailing that the chromosomes known as X and Y were responsible for the determination of the sex of the individual
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A colleague remembers:
"Modern cytological work involves an intricacy of detail, the significance of which can be appreciated by the specialist alone; but Miss Stevens had a share in a discovery of importance, and her name will be remembered for this, when the minutiae of detailed investigations that she carried out have become incorporated in the general body of the subject." —Thomas Hunt Morgan |
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