Eleanor Carothers, American Geneticist
Estrella Eleanor Carothers (December 4, 1882 - 1957) was an American zoologist, geneticist, and cytologist. She began her career at Pennsylvania State University, where she was appointed an assistant professor of zoology, and graduated with her Ph.D. in 1916. Carothers stayed on as assistant professor until 1936, though she also had an overlapping appointment as an independent investigator for the Marine Biological Laboratory, which lasted from 1920-41. In 1936 she moved to the University of Iowa and was a research associate. She completed her most important work, in the field of genetics and cytology, using grasshopper embryos to study the independent assortment of heteromorphic homologous chromosomes. This was the first physical evidence that homologous chromosomes separated independently during meiosis, which is one source of genetic variation in sexually-reproducing organisms. She died in 1957 at the age of 75. No photographer credited, undated
