Walter Sutton
Encyclopedia
Walter Stanborough Sutton (April 5, 1877 - November 10, 1916) was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 geneticist
Geneticist
A geneticist is a biologist who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a researcher or lecturer. Some geneticists perform experiments and analyze data to interpret the inheritance of skills. A geneticist is also a Consultant or...

 and physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 whose most significant contribution to present-day biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 was his theory that the Mendelian laws of inheritance
Mendelian inheritance
Mendelian inheritance is a scientific description of how hereditary characteristics are passed from parent organisms to their offspring; it underlies much of genetics...

 could be applied to chromosome
Chromosome
A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein found in cells. It is a single piece of coiled DNA containing many genes, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences. Chromosomes also contain DNA-bound proteins, which serve to package the DNA and control its functions.Chromosomes...

s at the cellular level of living organisms. This is now known as the Boveri-Sutton chromosome theory
Boveri-Sutton chromosome theory
The Boveri–Sutton chromosome theory is a fundamental unifying theory of genetics which identifies chromosomes as the carriers of genetic material...

.

Early life

Sutton was born in Utica, New York
Utica, New York
Utica is a city in and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The population was 62,235 at the 2010 census, an increase of 2.6% from the 2000 census....

, and was raised on a farm as the fifth of seven sons to Judge William B. Sutton and his wife, Agnes Black Sutton, in Russell, Kansas
Russell, Kansas
Russell is the most populous city in and county seat of Russell County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 4,506.-History:...

. On the farm, he developed a mechanical aptitude by maintaining and repairing farm equipment, an aptitude that proved helpful later as he worked on oil drilling rigs and with medical instrumentation.

University of Kansas

After graduating high school in Russell, he enrolled at the University of Kansas
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...

 in engineering in 1896. Following the death of his younger brother (John) from typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...

 in 1897, Sutton switched his major to biology with an interest in medicine. While at the University of Kansas, both he and his older brother, William Sutton, played basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 for Dr. James Naismith
James Naismith
The first game of "Basket Ball" was played in December 1891. In a handwritten report, Naismith described the circumstances of the inaugural match; in contrast to modern basketball, the players played nine versus nine, handled a soccer ball, not a basketball, and instead of shooting at two hoops,...

. Sutton distinguished himself as student being elected to both Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi and receiving both Bachelor and Master degrees by 1901. For his Masters thesis, he studied the spermatogenesis of Brachystola magna, a large grasshopper indigenous to the farmlands upon which Sutton was raised.

Columbia University

Considering the advice of his mentor at KU, Dr. C. E. McClung, Sutton moved to Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 for further study of zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 under Dr. Edmund B. Wilson
Edmund Beecher Wilson
Edmund Beecher Wilson was a pioneering American zoologist and geneticist. He wrote one of the most famous textbooks in the history of modern biology, The Cell.- Career :...

. 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
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 biologist Theodor Boveri
Theodor Boveri
-External links:* Fritz Baltzer. . excerpt from . University of California Press, Berkeley; pp. 85–97....

 independently reached the same conclusions as Sutton, and their concepts are often referred to as the Boveri-Sutton chromosome theory
Boveri-Sutton chromosome theory
The Boveri–Sutton chromosome theory is a fundamental unifying theory of genetics which identifies chromosomes as the carriers of genetic material...

. Sutton’s hypothesis was widely accepted by most scientists, particularly cytologists
Cell biology
Cell biology is a scientific discipline that studies cells – their physiological properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle, division and death. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level...

, at the time. The continued work of Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and embryologist and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries relating the role the chromosome plays in heredity.Morgan received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in zoology...

 at Columbia brought the theory to universal acceptance by 1915 through his studies of Drosophila melanogaster
Drosophila melanogaster
Drosophila melanogaster is a species of Diptera, or the order of flies, in the family Drosophilidae. The species is known generally as the common fruit fly or vinegar fly. Starting from Charles W...

, the fruit fly, even as William Bateson
William Bateson
William Bateson was an English geneticist and a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge...

 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
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, often known as P&S, is a graduate school of Columbia University that is located on the health sciences campus in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan...

 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
St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center
St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, an academic affiliate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, is a 1,076-bed, full-service community and tertiary care hospital serving New York City’s Midtown West, Upper West Side and parts of Harlem....

 in New York working in the surgical division headed by Dr. Joseph Blake.

Career

In addition to his clinic duties at Roosevelt Hospital, Sutton was also able to work with the Surgical Research Laboratory at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. With that support, he was able to begin developing and improving a variety of medical and surgical practices including improving anesthetic techniques, and perfecting abdominal irrigation.

In 1909, Sutton returned to Kansas City, Kansas
Kansas City, Kansas
Kansas City is the third-largest city in the state of Kansas and is the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the third largest city in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. The city is part of a consolidated city-county government known as the "Unified...

 where his family had relocated and his father and brother were in law practice. Sutton was appointed assistant professor of surgery at the four-year old University of Kansas Medical School. The tenuous nature of the appointment at the young school led him to also maintain a private practice and serve on the staff of St. Margaret’s Hospital as well as the University’s Bell Memorial Hospital
The University of Kansas Hospital
The University of Kansas Hospital, also known as KU Med, is a nonprofit, academic medical center located in Kansas City, Kansas, United States. In 1998, it became an independent entity that receives no funding from the state of Kansas. The hospital is affiliated with the University of Kansas...

. For six years, Sutton performed a wide range of surgeries carefully documenting the procedures. He published several articles related to these cases going back to his internship at Roosevelt.

In 1911, he had accepted a commission as a First Lieutenant in the United States Army Medical reserve Corps. This eventually led to his taking a leave of absence from the University in February, 1915 to serve at the American Ambulance Hospital outside Paris. Sutton and others from his days at Columbia and Roosevelt arrived at College of Juilly
College of Juilly
The College of Juilly The College of Juilly The College of Juilly (French: Collège de Juilly is a Catholic private teaching establishment located on the commune of Juilly, in Seine-et-Marne (France)...

 on February 23 where hospital facilities had been set up only 40 miles from the front lines of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. Within 2 months, he was surgeon-in-chief handling administrative duties in addition to his surgical responsibilities. His inventive aptitude was perhaps never more valued as he developed fluoroscopic techniques to identify and localize shrapnel within the soldier’s bodies and then removed the foreign items with instruments of his own design. After his return, he documented these techniques in Binnie’s Manual of Operative Surgery. Sutton’s return sailing from France was on June 26, 1915 having stayed only four months, but have made a significant contribution to wartime medical treatment.

Dr. Sutton died rather unexpectedly at the age of 39 due to complications from acute appendicitis
Appendicitis
Appendicitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the appendix. It is classified as a medical emergency and many cases require removal of the inflamed appendix, either by laparotomy or laparoscopy. Untreated, mortality is high, mainly because of the risk of rupture leading to...

.

External links

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