This story starts with Rollins A. Emerson, born in Upstate New York in 1873, who moved as a child to Nebraska, where his family homesteaded near Kearney. He obtained a bachelor of science degree from the Agricultural College at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1895, with the eminent botanist Charles E. Bessey as his mentor.

Emerson worked in Washington, D.C., for several years as a horticultural editor with the U.S. Department of Agricultures Office of Experiment Stations before returning to Lincoln in 1899 as the horticulturalist with the Nebraska Experiment Station and professor and head of the Horticulture Department, where he began his distinguished career in genetic research, concentrating first on the common bean.

Emerson was one of the first American scientists to embrace the ideas of Gregor Mendel, also referred to as Mendelian genetics. These principles state that certain genetic traits are inherited or passed on to progeny from their parents, and were derived after carefully conducted experiments with garden peas.

After publishing his results in an obscure Austrian journal in 1866, Mendels work went unnoticed until 1900, when his publication was rediscovered independently by four scientists: Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries; German botanist and geneticist Carl Correns; Austrian agronomy graduate student Erich von Tschermak-Seysenegg; and American wheat breeder and economist William Jasper Spillman.

Emerson was awarded a Ph.D. in 1912 and became interested in corn research, moving to Cornell University in 1914 to head the Department of Plant Breeding. It was here over the next three decades that he achieved world renown as a pioneer corn geneticist. He eventually built a corn breeding and genetics dynasty, mentoring many brilliant young scientists who later became accomplished geneticists (as both researchers and teachers) in their own rights.

It is also very possible that Emerson might have become even more universally famous and recognized for his work had he been better-versed in the German language. Wayne F. Keim (another University of Nebraska and Cornell Plant Breeding alumnus) related a story to me that was told to him personally by Emerson.

Keim

Wayne Keim is the son of F. D. Keim, the namesake for Keim Hall, the building on East Campus now housing the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture. Although Emerson had retired before the elder Keim started graduate school at Cornell in 1947, he did meet and visit with Emerson on several occasions. On one of those encounters, Emerson informed Keim that he had seen Mendels paper on the landmark pea experiments in the late 1890s while still at Nebraska, but due to his lack of mastery of German, he was unable to fully understand the significance of Mendels paper published 35 years earlier.

Based on this conversation with Emerson, Keim then pondered: How close was Rollins A. Emerson and the University of Nebraska College of Agriculture to being the first discoverers rather than the three Europeans?

Keim grew up on a farm near Hardy, Nebraska. After graduating from Davenport High School, he attended Peru State Normal (now known as Peru State College), a school designed to train elementary- and secondary-school teachers.

He taught for several years in high schools in southeastern Nebraska before entering the College of Agriculture at the University of Nebraska, where he earned the Bachelor of Science degree in 1914. He completed a Master of Science degree in 1918, while also working as a full-time assistant in agronomy.

During his undergraduate years Keim encountered Emerson, prior to Emersons move to Cornell. Emerson stimulated his lifelong interest in genetics, and encouraged Keim to pursue a Ph.D. at Cornell University.

Because Keim was now a full-time member of the faculty and did not want to give up his position in Lincoln, he made use of annual leaves and sabbaticals to complete the Ph.D. gradually, finishing it in 1927. All of his research and writing of the dissertation was done in Lincoln.

By all accounts, Keim was an outstanding teacher, always eager to identify outstanding students and assign them special tasks assisting him like grading papers and tests, or conducting research projects and greenhouse work, in the effort to spur their interest in genetics and agriculture at the academic level. His recruiting methods were often biased toward Cornell and their plant breeding program.

Keims influence was so strong that he continued advising many of his protgs throughout their careers wherever they ended up. Many went on to play key roles nationally as teachers, researchers, administrators, and in industry positions.

Two of Keims more prominent undergraduate mentees were George F. Sprague and George W. Beadle. Both additionally attended and completed Ph.D.s with Emerson at Cornell in the plant breeding department, Sprague in 1930 and Beadle in 1931.

Sprague and Beadle

Sprague went on to a long, distinguished and internationally recognized career as a corn breeder and geneticist with both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Iowa State University. Many students he trained afterward listed him as their primary influence and mentor. He was additionally elected into the National Academy of Sciences.

After the Ph.D. and several postdoctoral positions, Beadle went on to a brilliant career as a geneticist on the faculty of three institutions (Harvard, California Institute of Technology, and Stanford) before serving as both Chancellor and President of the University of Chicago.

While at Stanford, he teamed with the biochemist E. L. Tatum investigating biochemical genetics using the bread mold fungus Neurospora crassa as the model organism. In this system, they discovered the role of certain genes in producing enzymes that regulate biochemical pathways in cells, referred to as the one gene-one enzyme theory, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958.

Beadle was additionally honored in 1994 when the University of Nebraskas Center for Biotechnology was named after him (George W. Beadle Center for Genetics and Biomaterials Research).

Srb and Keim

Adrian Srb, son of Frank Keims UNL agricultural faculty colleague Jerome Srb, was inspired to pursue the Ph.D. after completing his bachelors degree at Nebraska. He attended Stanford, working with Beadle in genetics. After completion of his doctorate, he took a job at Cornell in the plant breeding department.

This story comes full circle with F.D. Keims son, Wayne. After completing his fathers course in genetics (and a B.S. in agronomy), he was also encouraged by his father to attend Cornell and work with Srb.

Wayne related that Adrian Srb was the individual responsible for him to seek a career in plant breeding, with an emphasis on teaching genetics to undergraduate students. Keim then spent 45 years at Purdue University and Colorado State University before retiring in 1992. Quite an impressive academic pedigree originally initiated in Nebraska by Rollins A. Emerson.

Read more:
Nebraska played a major role in the advancement of plant genetics and crop breeding - High Plains Journal