John Spangler Nicholas

John Spangler Nicholas (10 March 1895 – 11 September 1963) was an American embryologist and a professor of zoology at Yale University. He contributed to experimental techniques for the study of embryology through transplants, the early stage development of teleost and mammalian zygotes.

Life and work

Nicholas was born at Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, the only child of Reverend Samuel Trauger and Elizabeth Ellen. Although the parents hoped he would join the Lutheran order, he chose to study medicine, influenced by an uncle, Harry Spangler. His early education was at Gettysburg College (BS 1916 and MS 1917) followed by entry into Yale. He enlisted with the Army Medical Corps during the war and returned following discharge in 1919. He received a doctorate in 1921. In 1915 He then taught anatomy at the University of Pittsburgh at the invitation of Davenport Hooker. He joined Yale in 1926 and became Sterling professor of zoology in 1939. He served at Yale until his retirement in 1963.[1]

Nicholas followed experiments in the asymmetry of development which had been begun by his Yale supervisor Ross G. Harrison. Harrison had shown that grafts develop as left or right limbs based on the orientation in which a limb bud was grafted. Spangler showed that this orientation was defined by a narrow ring of cells. He later developed experimental methods to grow rat embryos in chicken chorioallantois.[1][2][3][4]

Nicholas married Helen Benton Brown in 1921.[1]

References
  1. Oppenheimer, Jane M. (1969). "John Spangler Nicholas" (PDF). Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences. 40: 239–289.
  2. Nicholas, J. S. (1947). "Experimental Approaches to Problems of Early Development in the Rat". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 22 (3): 179–195. doi:10.1086/395786. ISSN 0033-5770.
  3. Nicholas, J. S. (1925). "Notes on the application of experimental methods upon mammalian embryos". The Anatomical Record. 31 (4): 385–394. doi:10.1002/ar.1090310404. ISSN 0003-276X.
  4. Nicholas, J. S.; Rudnick, Dorothea (1933). "The development of embryonic rat tissues upon the chick chorioallantois". Journal of Experimental Zoology. 66 (2): 193–261. doi:10.1002/jez.1400660203. ISSN 0022-104X.
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