Ethel Browne Harvey

A notable female in the field of biology during the early to mid-1900s, Ethel Browne Harvey was an embryologist who used sea urchins for her research on cell division.

As a graduate student at Columbia University in the lab of Thomas Hunt Morgan, Browne carried out the first experiments demonstrating a developmental axial organizer in an animal, using grafting of Hydra. A discussion of these experiments can be found in the following article: Lenhoff, Howard M. “Ethel Browne, Hans Spemann, and the Discovery of the Organizer Phenomenon.” Biological Bulletin, vol. 181, no. 1, 1991, pp. 72–80. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1542490.

Browne received her Ph.D. for work she did in the laboratory of E.B. Wilson, who is also buried in the Woods Hole Cemetery. Browne spent many summers at MBL and served as a member of the MBL Corporation and as an MBL Trustee.