Edward Novitski

Edward Novitski (July 24, 1918 – June 29, 2006) was an American geneticist. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1945, and 1974. The Edward Novitski Prize was named for him.

Life He was born in Wilkes-Barre. He experimented with Drosophila in high school, and his later research mainly concerned Drosophila genetics, both at the beginning of his career, and also at the end. He graduated from Purdue University, and California Institute of Technology. He did research at the University of Rochester, University of Missouri, and at Caltech. From 1951 to 1956, he taught at the University of Missouri. He led the Drosophila genetics group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. From 1958 to 1983, he taught at the University of Oregon.

In addition to his work on Drosophila genetics, Novitski also concerned himself with more general matters, such as R. A. Fisher's conclusion that Mendel's results with the garden pea were "too good to be true".

Works

Genetics and biology of Drosophila, 1976 Human genetics, 1977 Sturtevant and Dobzhansky Two Scientists at Odds, 2005