Edward L. Mark
May 30, 1847 - December 16, 1946
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Scientific Discipline: Cellular and Developmental Biology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1903)
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Edward Mark’s research enhanced our understanding of morphology in the early life stages of arthropods. Working with the common garden slug, Limax campertris, he described the structure of the Limax embryo and the structure’s relation to development, fertility, and cell proliferation and differentiation.
Mark graduated from the University of Michigan in 1871. After working as an astronomer for the U.S. Northern Boundary Survey he attended the University of Leipzig in Germany, where he received his PhD in zoology in 1876. He became a professor of zoology at Harvard University in 1877 and was appointed Hersey Professor of Anatomy in 1885. He served as the director of the Harvard Zoological Laboratories from 1900 to 1921. During this time he also helped found the Bermuda Laboratory for Research and served as director of laboratories from 1903 to 1931. Mark is also credited with conceiving the “Harvard System” of citation, in which references are cited parenthetically within the body of a scientific article using the author’s name and the date of publication.
