Edward Novitski (July 24, 1918 – June 29, 2006) was an American geneticist. He won a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in 1945, and 1974. The Edward Novitski Prize was named for him.

Life

He was born in

Wilkes-Barre Wilkes-Barre ( , alternatively or ) is a city in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in the 2020 census. ...

. He experimented with

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' (), from Ancient Greek δρόσος (''drósos''), meaning "dew", and φίλος (''phílos''), meaning "loving", is a genus of fly, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or p ...

in high school, and his later research mainly concerned Drosophila genetics, both at the beginning of his career, and also at the end. He graduated from

Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

, and

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

. He did research at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

, and at Caltech. From 1951 to 1956, he taught at the

. He led the Drosophila genetics group at

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1943, the laboratory is sponsored by the United Sta ...

. From 1958 to 1983, he taught at the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a Public university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...

. In addition to his work on Drosophila genetics, Novitski also concerned himself with more general matters, such as

R. A. Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who ...

's conclusion that Mendel's results with the garden pea were "too good to be true".

Works

* Genetics and biology of Drosophila, 1976 * Human genetics, 1977 * Sturtevant and Dobzhansky Two Scientists at Odds, 2005Xlibris is to some degree a vanity press.

References

{{US-biologist-stub 1918 births 2006 deaths American biologists University of Oregon faculty Purdue University alumni