Whitman, C(harles) O(tis) (1842–1910)

US zoologist. 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 behaviour. He founded the Journal of Morphology in 1887.

Whitman was 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 at Harvard University (1883–85), then directed the Allis Lake Laboratory in Milwaukee (1886–89). He moved to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts (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 at Woods Hole, Massachusetts (1888–1908).