Nettie Stevens
Sign in to saveAlso known as Nettie Maria Stevens, Nettie M. Stevens, N. M. Stevens
American geneticist (1861–1912)
Key facts
- Born
- Nettie Maria Stevens , ( 1861-07-07 ) July 7, 1861, Cavendish, Vermont , United States
- Died
- May 4, 1912 (1912-05-04) (aged 50), Baltimore, Maryland , United States
- Education
- Westford Academy , Westfield Normal School , Stanford University (BA , MA) , Bryn Mawr College ( PhD )
- Known for
- XY sex-determination system
- Fields
- Genetics
- Institutions
- Bryn Mawr College , Carnegie Institution of Washington
- Thesis
- Further studies on the ciliate Infusoria, Licnophora and Boveria (1903)
- Doctoral advisor
- Thomas Hunt Morgan
- Doctoral students
- Alice Middleton Boring
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Family name
- Stevens
- Gender
- female
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Cavendish
- Place of death
- Baltimore
- Occupation
- librarian
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Student of
- Theodor Boveri
- Doctoral student
- Alice Middleton Boring
- Field of work
- biology
- Image
- Nettie Maria Stevens.jpg
Show 7 more facts
- date of birth
- 1861-07-07
- date of death
- 1912-05-04
- cause of death
- breast cancer
- student
- Alice Middleton Boring
- Commons category
- Nettie Stevens
- manner of death
- natural causes
- influenced by
- Edmund Beecher Wilson
via Wikidata · CC0
~14 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Nettie Maria Stevens (July 7, 1861 – May 4, 1912) was an American geneticist who discovered sex chromosomes. In 1905, soon after the rediscovery of Mendel's paper on genetics in 1900, she observed that male mealworms produced two kinds of sperm, one with a large chromosome and one with a small chromosome. When the sperm with the large chromosome fertilized eggs, they produced female offspring, and when the sperm with the small chromosome fertilized eggs, they produced male offspring. The pair of sex chromosomes that she studied later became known as the X and Y chromosomes.
Early life
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Nettie Stevens” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.