Laurence H. Snyder

Laurence Hasbrouck Snyder (July 23, 1901 – October 8, 1986) was a pioneer in human genetics and president of the University of Hawaii.

Snyder was born in Kingston, New York, the second of five children of DeWitt Clinton Snyder (1859-1919) and his wife Gertrude Louisa Wood Snyder (1869-1961). His parents were Christian missionaries who had lived in the Belgian Congo. He was a descendant of the Hasbrouck family and of Louis DuBois. His first cousin twice removed was politician William Lounsbery.

Graduating from Rutgers University in 1922 with a B.S. degree, he received a doctor of science degree from Harvard University in 1926.

Snyder taught at four academic institutions, all state universities: North Carolina State College (1924-1930) as professor of biology, Ohio State University (1930-1947) as professor of genetics and later chairman of the Department of Zoology and Entomology, the University of Oklahoma (1947-1958) as Dean of the graduate college and professor of medicine, and the University of Hawaii (1958-1963) as President and later professor and professor emeritus.

At the University of Hawaii, Snyder presided over an expansion of 37 new buildings and a doubling of enrollment. He was particularly proud of the beautiful mall, shaded by monkeypod trees, stretching from Varney Circle to East West Center Road.

In 1961, Snyder attempted to terminate the university's intercollegiate football program, believing it to be incompatible with the university's academic mission. However, after alumni protests, the decision was reversed.

Snyder received three honorary degrees. He served terms as president of the Genetics Society of America, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Society of Human Genetics.

Biography/Career Laurence Hasbrouck Snyder was born on July 23, 1901. Born in Kingston NY, Snyder’s parents, DeWitt Clinton Snyder and Gertrude Wood Snyder conceived him in Africa, where they worked as Christian medical missionaries. During their time there, Snyder’s mother showed symptoms of hemoglobinuric fever, forcing them to return to the United States and end their missionary. Throughout his lifetime, Snyder received a plethora of honors and awards, some of which include: election into 18 honorary societies, national president of Phi Sigma from 1953 to 1963, honorary degrees from Sc.D., Rutgers, 1947; Sc.D., Ohio State, 1960; and L.H.D., North Carolina State 1962. Snyder's contributions also track a shift in his academic focus from racialized aspects of population genetics in the 1920s to genetic and medical concerns more centered around the individual in the 1940s and 50s.

Snyder's research, between 1926 and 1949, was reported in a series of 35 papers with the overall title, "Studies in Human Inheritance". These range over subjects that include blood groups, polydactylism, hemophilia, baldness, sex ratios, Rh incompatibility, and other topics. Perhaps his most remembered work is his study of phenylthiocarbamide, a chemical that tastes bitter to some individuals but is without taste to others, depending on the inheritance of a single gene.

Blood group genetics In the early 1920s, the debate over the ABO blood group emerged with great enthusiasm in the scientific arena. Polish bacteriologist Ludwik Hirszfeld and his wife, pediatrician Hanna Hirszfeld, proposed in 1919 that blood groups were a result of two independent genetic loci, an A gene and a separate B gene. However, in 1924, German mathematician Felix Bernstein introduced a triple-allele hypothesis, contending that population data fit better with a single blood-group gene with three alleles, A, B, O, as we know of now. In 1925, Snyder published his thesis in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, applying the triple-allele hypothesis to type humans based on racial groups. Collaborating with American physician William Allan, Snyder drew blood from North Carolina Cherokee Indians and quantitatively analyzed blood-group proportions among the various racial hybrids within this population. Through this, he developed a theory of classifying races based on the relative proportion of different blood groups in different populations. He characterized humans as six races: European, Hunan, Indomanchurian, Africo-Malaysian, Pacific-American, and Australian, with these races having radiated from a single human origin.

Testing of heritable conditions In the 1920s, there were only six clearly defined human traits whose genetics were well studied: the ABO blood group, the MN blood type, eye color, the direction of the whorl of hair at the back of the head, the presence of hair on the second joint of fingers and toes, and the dominant form of migraine discovered by William Allan. Snyder discovered a seventh in 1931, and developed the first genetic test for a trait.

For most people, phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) tastes really bitter, but to a significant fraction of the population, the taste is entirely undetectable. Snyder was interested in confirming whether the ability to taste PTC is a Mendelian trait and sought to understand the biological and genetic nature of this trait. In his research, Snyder collected data from 800 families with 2,843 children to cover sufficient ground on the possible genetic combinations of this allele. He found that the gene PTC is associated with acted like a classic dominant, and both alleles (the taster and non-taster ones) are common.

To test for the presence of the PTC taster allele, Snyder found a simple, cost-effective and convenient way of soaking a slip of paper in a solution containing PTC and letting the paper dry. In 1935, Snyder published his own textbook, The Principles of Heredity, which had five editions and was widely used in genetics courses. Snyder went on to establish four medical genetics programs on his own and was directly involved in the founding of at least two others. He was also a founder of the first professional society in medical genetics in 1948.

Eugenics Snyder strongly believed that genetics hold great medical benefit in terms of the prevention of disease, through reducing the incidence of hereditary illness or even eliminating them altogether.