Ethel Browne came to the MBLin 1907 while a graduate student. She was completing her PhD at Columbia with Thomas Hunt Morgan and cytologist Edmund Beecher Wilson. In 1916 she married Edmund Harvey, another MBLscientist. For nearly sixty years, she spent almost every summer at the MBLstudying germ cells, fertilization, and cleavage especially in sea urchins, using traditional microscopical equipment and methods.
Harvey was an accomplished scientist at a time when opportunities for women were limited. She valued the MBLas a place to explore her ideas with other biologists. In 1950, Harvey became the second woman elected to the MBLboard of trustees.
In 1936 she tried out the new tool, the Harvey-Loomis 鈥渙ptical centrifuge鈥 designed by her husband along with engineer Alfred Loomis. This allowed her to 鈥渟pin鈥 the nuclei out of sea urchin eggs. She then induced cleavage of the remaining yolk. The following year, many American press outlets sensationalized her 鈥渃reation of life without parents.鈥
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Separation of nuclei from the sea urchin egg in 鈥渙ptical centrifuge鈥
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Electron micrograph of A. punctulata cell
In 1942, RCA Fellow Thomas F. Anderson brought a loaned RCA Type B electron microscope to the 美女直播做爱, offering demonstrations. That summer, Harvey and Anderson carried out an electron microscopy study of the fertilization membrane in Arbacia punctulata, the Atlantic purple sea urchin. It was apparently another decade before electron microscopes returned to the 美女直播做爱.
1. Still Image: "Ethel Browne Harvey", 6/11/2012,听.听
2. Wikimedia Commons contributors, "File:GFNMS - purple urchins (27703864430).jpg,"听Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository,听听(accessed October 11, 2021).
3. Harvey, Ethel Browne. 1936. 鈥淧arthenogenetic merogony or cleavage without nuclei in Arbacia punctulata.鈥澨The Biological Bulletin听71(1), pp.101鈥121. Page 105, Photograph 1.
4. B & L Centrifuge Microscope (after Harvey Loomis) Bausch & Lomb. 1934.听The Collecting Net 9(74): 80.
5. Harvey, Ethel Browne and Thomas F. Anderson. 1943. 鈥淭he Spermatozoon and Fertilization Membrane of Arabcia puntulata as Shown by the Electron Microscope.鈥 The Biological Bulletin听85: 151鈥156. Plate II, Figure 4.