Whitman, C. O.

Whitman, C. O. (Charles Otis) (1842–1910) zoologist; born in Woodstock, Maine. He was a professor at the Imperial University of Japan (1880–81), where his four students became their country's pioneers in zoology. He performed research at the Naples Zoology Station (1882), became an assistant at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard (1883–85), then directed the Allis Lake Laboratory, Milwaukee (1886–89), where he founded the Journal of Morphology (1887). He moved to Clark University (Worcester, Mass.) (1889–92), then became a professor and curator of the Zoological Museum at the University of Chicago (1892–1910), while concurrently serving as director of the Marine Biology Laboratory, Woods Hole (Mass.), from its founding in 1888 until 1908. A dedicated educator who preferred to teach a few research students at a time, he made major contributions in the areas of evolution and embryology of worms, comparative anatomy, heredity, and animal behavior.