AKA Ethel Nicholson Browne Harvey

Born: 14-Dec-1885
Birthplace: Baltimore, MD
Died: 2-Sep-1965
Location of death: Falmouth, MA
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Zoologist, Biologist

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Embryology of sea urchins

Embryologist and cell biologist Ethel Browne Harvey studied under Thomas H. Morgan and Edmund Beecher Wilson. At age 30 she married physiologist E. Newton Harvey, and soon dedicated herself to motherhood, working on science only part-time. Still, she became a leading expert on the embryology of sea urchins. She also studied insect spermatogenesis, and conducted some of the earliest modern experiments that foreshadowed creation of life in the laboratory, including a landmark study suggesting that early stages of cleavage could occur in an unfertilized egg without any contribution from either the maternal or paternal nucleus.

Father: Bennet Barnard Browne (physician)
Mother: Jennifer Nicholson Browne ("Jennie")
Sister: Jennie Nicholson Browne (physician)
Brother: Bennet Barnard Browne, Jr. (physician)
Brother: De Courcy Browne (metallurgist)
Sister: Mary Nicholson Browne (physician)
Husband: E. Newton Harvey (physiologist, b. 1857, m. 1916, d. 1959)
Son: Edmund Newton Harvey, Jr. (chemist, b. 1916)
Son: Richard Harvey (physician, b. 1922)

    High School: Bryn Mawr School, Baltimore, MD (1902)
    University: BA, Goucher College (1906)
    Scholar: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (summers, 1906-50)
    University: MA Zoology, Columbia University (1907)
    University: PhD Zoology, Columbia University (1913)
    Teacher: Biology, Dana Hall School, Wellesley, MA (1913-14)
    Scholar: Marine Biology, Stanford University (1914-15)
    Teacher: Histiology, Cornell University (1915-21)
    Teacher: Cornell University (1921-27)
    Teacher: New York University (1927-31)
    Scholar: Princeton University (1931-59)
    Administrator: Trustee, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1950-69)

    American Philosophical Society

Author of books:
The American Arbacia and Other Sea Urchins (1956)

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