Nettie Stevens

Common card · No. 420923

Nettie Maria Stevens (July 7, 1861 – May 4, 1912) was the American geneticist who discovered sex chromosomes. In 1905, soon after the rediscovery of Mendel's paper on genetics in 1900, she observed that male mealworms produced two kinds of sperm, one with a large chromosome and one with a small chromosome. When the sperm with the large chromosome fertilized eggs, they produced female offspring, and when the sperm with the small chromosome fertilized eggs, they produced male offspring. The pair of sex chromosomes that she studied later became known as the X and Y chromosomes.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Carnegie Institution of Washington (according to the back of the photograph, visible at the download page) Restored by Adam Cuerden., Public domain