Edgar Anderson introduced the term introgressive hybridization and his 1949 book of that title was an original and important contribution to botanical genetics.
18 Facts About Edgar Anderson
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Edgar Anderson was president of the Botanical Society of America in 1952, and was a charter member of the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Herb Society of America Edgar Anderson received the Darwin-Wallace Medal of the Linnean Society in 1958.
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In 1914 Edgar Anderson entered Michigan State College to study botany and horticulture.
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Edgar Anderson's studies were supervised by geneticist Edward Murray East and Anderson worked on the genetics of self-incompatibility in Nicotiana.
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Edgar Anderson was awarded a master's degree in 1920 and a DSc in agricultural genetics in 1922.
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Edgar Anderson accepted a position as a geneticist at the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1922.
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Edgar Anderson was appointed assistant professor of botany at Washington University in St Louis.
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Edgar Anderson's research was focused on developing techniques to quantify geographic variation in Iris versicolor.
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Edgar Anderson determined the existence of a second species, Iris virginica.
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Edgar Anderson's data set on three related species of irises was used by Fisher as an example with which to demonstrate statistical methods of classification and has subsequently become very well known in the machine learning community, though often described as Fisher's iris data.
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Edgar Anderson returned to the United States in 1931 and took a position at the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard where he worked with geneticist Karl Sax.
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Edgar Anderson was the first to introduce the term introgressive hybridization.
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In 1941 Edgar Anderson was invited to present the Jesup Lectures at Columbia University with Ernst Mayr, discussing the role of genetics on plant systematics.
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However, unlike the other presenters of the Jesup Lectures, whose writings would be regarded as the foundation of the modern evolutionary synthesis, Edgar Anderson never completed his accompanying manuscript for Systematics and the origin of species.
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Edgar Anderson published Introgressive Hybridization in 1949, describing gene transfer between hybridizing forms, and the role of introgression in speciation.
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Edgar Anderson wrote the popular science book Plants, Man, and Life, described by one reviewer as "a book every botanist and anthropologist should read".
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Edgar Anderson was briefly director of the Missouri Gardens in 1954, but returned to teaching in 1957.
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Edgar Anderson was a close colleague and friend of Esther Lederberg.