Walter Stanborough Sutton was a surgeon and a biologist who advanced the findings and confirmed the genetic theories of Gregor Mendel. A physician in private practice for the last half of his life, Sutton discovered the role of chromosomes in meiosis (sex cell division) and their relationship to Mendel's laws of heredity. From his research with grasshoppers collected at his parent's farm in the summer of 1899, he went on to make a major contribution to the understanding of the workings of chromosomes in sexual reproduction.

The fifth of six sons, Sutton was born in Utica, New York, to William Bell Sutton and Agnes Black Sutton. At age ten, Sutton moved with his family to Russell County, Kansas, where he attended public schools. He studied engineering at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, beginning in 1896. Following his younger brother's death from typhoid in 1897, however, he made a pivotal change in...