MBL History Project

Fishing and fish collecting were and are  integral  parts of work life and life in general at MBL. From specimen collection for research and just plain fishing to feed the community, a lot of time is spent in boats and collecting boats.  

Beginning in the early twentieth century, the Marine Biological Laboratory published a weekly newsletter detailing the events and issues at the lab in Woods Hole, Mass. Sometimes this newsletter transcribed lectures given at the lab by Nobel Prize winning scientists, and other times it simply kept the Woods Hole residents up to date with the latest happening in the sea side town.

While perusing the publication, one can’t help but get a good laugh at some of the news updates. Examples below are from the 1930s:

Meet Edwin Conklin. Conklin earned his PhD in Biology from Johns Hopkins University in 1891. He studied cell lineages using snail’s eggs, which are large enough to see as the cells go through cell divisions. Using these eggs, Conklin could observe the cell divisions in living embryos. Throughout his life he held a number of important scientific roles, from editing the Biological Bulletin, and the Journal of Experimental Zoology, to receiving awards from the National Academy of Sciences. 

Conklin at the MBL. Conklin taught the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Embryology course for many years. He is famous for telling interesting stories, and he often lectured on  his favorite organism of study: Crepidula (a type of sea snail). Conklin visited the MBL every summer from the 1890s through the 1930s!  He owned a house in Woods Hole and was also a Trustee for many years.

For more on Conklin, check out our digital exhibit on his life and work. The exhibit even includes an audio recording of an interview with Conklin just days before his death (which can also be found directly here). 

The Marine Biological Laboratory has been conducting biology courses since the 1890s. In 1895, the lab offered courses on botany, embryology, zoology, and more. The photos show courses a lively summer scene of research!

The Zoology course out for a field trip on the collecting vessel the Vigilant.

The Botany course collecting specimens on the beach! In these early years at the MBL, students collected the organisms they would study in the lab.

The faculty of the summer of 1895.

Faculty and students in the 1895 Botany course. As with many courses at the MBL, this photo shows that both men and women researched at the Marine Biological Laboratory from the very beginning.

Who says science has to be a strictly serious affair? Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory have always believed that science mixes well with fun. The Lab’s weekly publication “The Collecting Net” mixes serious scientific discussion with fun anecdotes--including songs!

Here are two examples of songs about science from The Collecting Net in 1927.

Meet Alfred Henry Sturtevant. Born today in 1891, Sturtevant studied genetics in Columbia University’s famous “fly room” under Thomas Hunt Morgan. Among his many contributions to science, Sturtevant constructed the first genetic map of a chromosome. Like others in the fly room, Sturtevant was a pioneer in approaching biology using experimental methods. 

Strurtevant at the MBL. Along with other Columbia geneticists, Sturtevant spent many summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory. The archives show pictures of him collecting specimens and spending time with friends throughout the 1910s and 1920s!

Meet Frank Rattray Lillie. Lillie studied embryology and biology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He spent much of his professional life at the University of Chicago, where obtained his PhD, became a Professor of Embryology, and later headed the Department of Zoology. His classic book is the 1908 Development of the Chick: An Introduction to Embryology.

Lillie at the MBL. Lillie came to the MBL in 1891, after finishing his degree at the University of Toronto. He studied clams and mussels under the supervision of the then-MBL-director Charles Whitman. Lillie asked how blastomeres contributed to the formation of organs. He also held numerous leadership positions at the MBL, organized the Embryology Course, and was the editor of MBL’s scientific publication The Biological Bulletin for twenty-five years. 

Lillie’s Legacy. Lillie held numerous important scientific positions, and it has been said that Lillie helped make biology the first science in which Americans became internationally recognized. For more on his life and work, check out a biography article by our sister project, the Embryo Project. A building at the MBL (the brick building pictured below) was named in his honor.

Meet Margaret Sumwalt. Sumwalt studied at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1920s, earning her PhD in Physiology in 1929. Over the course of her career, she researched a number of different question--from electrophysiology to pharmacology. She also held positions as a Professor at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan. 

Sumwalt at the MBL. (Above photo from MBL archives) Sumwalt took the botany course in 1923. A few years later she transitioned into investigator of physiology, studying Fundulus (a type of small fish) eggs, and later frogs. By the 1930s she became an instructor for some of the summer courses. 

The Marine Biological Laboratory’s Embryology Course has been around since 1893. Aimed at teaching the latest methods in developmental biology, the course provides students with an opportunity to observe and experiment with embryos. As with every MBL venture, the course was open to both men and women. The first ever course photograph (above) shows a number of women were enrolled right from the start.

For the first few decades, the course cost $50 dollars, and students were given a supply of fish eggs to observe and experiment on. Students were expected to bring their own microscopes, as well as drawing tools such as a camera lucida tracing instrument.

The MBL archives contain many memories from the Embryology Course over the years, such as John P. Trinkaus’s notes from the course in 1939.

The library at the Marine Biological Laboratory originated in 1888. It is now called The Marine Biological Laboratory-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library, and though it has gone through some changes over the years, in many ways it remains the same. 

The library has a rich history. Cornelia Clapp, who held two PhD’s in biology, was the first ever librarian. 

If you’d like to know more, check out our “Women of the Lab” post on Clapp and an article on the history of The Marine Biological Laboratory-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library by our sister project, the Embryo Project!

Do you have any idea what seining is? Until today, I didn’t. Full disclosure: I’m not a marine biologist, and I know nothing about fishing. I’m just a historian who gets to play around in the Marine Biological Laboratory’s archives. And in those archives, I found pictures of people “seining.” The dictionary defines a seine as “a large net with sinkers on one edge and floats on the other that hangs vertically in the water and is used to enclose and catch fish when its ends are pulled together or are drawn ashore.”

So basically, you trudge through the mud, dragging large nets? Sounds pretty fun. At the Marine Biological Laboratory, seining is used to collect specimens that can be studied in the lab. These photos are of two men seining for fundulus (small, ray-finned fishes) in a pong in Cape Cod.

Check out all those little fishes! I don’t know, maybe it’s just me--I love playing in the mud--but seining seems like a good time. Seining is still practiced widely in fishing and marine biology today. Maybe it’s time to consider being a marine biologist?! 

Meet Edmund Beecher Wilson. Wilson was a cell biologist interested in heredity and evolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He experimented with embryos to better understand how cells were inherited and how cells divided during development. Wilson was one of the first scientists to experiment with embryos, rather than simply observe them. He was also a celebrated professor at Columbia University. (Above image MBL History Project)

The Cell. Wilson’s major text, The Cell in Development and Inheritance, was first published in a staple in biology classrooms. The Cell grew in various editions from 300 pages when it first appeared in 1894, to 400, and eventually 1200 pages! Read more about the contents  and significance of The Cell in an article by our sister project, the Embryo Project. 

Wilson at MBL. Wilson spent many summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory experimenting with marine invertebrates such as the Nereis worm. He even meet his wife in Woods Hole. Throughout his life, Wilson transitioned at the MBL from an investigator at first, to later an instructor, and finally, after he retired, a trustee. Later in his life Wilson remembered his positions at the MBL more important to his scientific career than any other society. (Above image MBL History Project) 

(Image MBL History Project)

(Image MBL History Project) 

Our sister project (The Embryo Project) has multiple articles on Wilson, including a biography, as well as an article detailing his experiments with germ localization in 1904.

(Image MBL History Project)

Meet Carl Richard Moore. Moore researched hormones and sex differentiation in the early twentieth century. He studied biology for his undergraduate and masters degree, and graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in Zoology in 1916. Moore spent the rest of his career at Chicago, as a professor and eventually chair of the Zoology department. In his over 90 publications, Moore made many scientific discoveries, including the fact that the scrotal sac controls the testes’ temperature, necessary for the production of sperm.

Moore at the MBL. Moore began spending summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory when he was a graduate student. His mentor, Frank Rattray Lillie, was a regular MBL investigator. Moore, along with Lillie and others, was an editor for the MBL publication The Biological Bulletin. To learn more about Moore’s life and work, check out this article by our sister project, The Embryo Project, as well as this article on his 1947 publication Embryonic Sex Differentiation and Sex Hormones.

(Image MBL History Project)

Meet Sally Hughes Schrader. She studied at Columbia University in the 1920′s, obtaining both her masters and her PhD in zoology. Schrader was the first person to ever dissect all the cranial nerves of the dogfish (Squalus icanthias). After obtaining her degrees, Schrader became a Professor of Zoology at both Columbia University and Bryn Mawr College.

(Image MBL History Project)

Schrader at the MBL. Schrader first came to the Marine Biological Laboratory as a student in the Embryology Course in 1918. At the MBL, Schrader studied dogfish. She later enrolled in the protozoology course, and spent many years as an independent investigator at the lab. She and her husband, geneticist Franz Schrader, enjoyed active pursuits such as swimming and boating around Woods Hole. They later became Life Members of the MBL Corporation. The MBL has a collection of Schrader’s photographs and letters in the archives.

(Franz, Sally, and Mary Huettner, Image MBL Library)

This has been a Women of the Lab post. Through photos and stories, these posts draw from the archives of the Marine Biological Laboratory to paint a clearer picture of science throughout history.

For more great images and resources such as online ehibits, interviews with scientists and more, check out our website http://history.archives.mbl.edu/ and find us on Twitter and Facebook @mblhistory