AGASSIZ, HYATT, WHITMAN, AND THE BIRTH OF THE MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY

Abstract

This paper establishes that the MBL began as a self-consciously American marine laboratory, following the lead of its American predecessors. In particular, Louis Agassiz's School of Natural History at Penikese Island and Alpheus Hyatt's Laboratory for instruction at Annisquam, Massachusetts, directly inspired the MBL. Archival sources reveal the connections and the MBL's goals. Teaching and research were accepted as the dual and compatible goals for the Laboratory, and it was left to the first director, Charles Otis Whitman, to work out how best to combine the two. These emphases and the clientele thus attracted clearly distinguished the MBL from the European laboratories, such as the Naples Zoological Station, which concentrated on independent research. In part the MBL achieved success because both the teaching and research focused on shared basic questions, namely developmental questions posed within a solid morphological tradition. Epigenesis and preformation, the role of cells in development, cell lineage study of early egg organization: such themes ran through most of the work done at the MBL in the first year.