Elizabeth Wagner Reed

Elizabeth Wagner Reed (August 27, 1912 – July 14, 1996) was an American geneticist and one of the first scientists to work on Drosophila speciation. She taught women's studies courses and had a particular interest in research aimed at recovering the history of nineteenth-century women scientists. Born in the Philippines to a Northern Irish nurse and an American civil servant, she grew up in Carroll, Ohio. After earning bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees from Ohio State University, she became a teacher with an interest in genetics. In the 1940s, she worked with her husband on plant genetics at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. After he was killed in action during World War II, she returned to Ohio and conducted studies on penicillin at the Ohio State Research Foundation.

After a second marriage to Sheldon C. Reed, the couple became research partners, first at Harvard University and from 1947 at the Dight Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota. As her husband directed the institute which had rules against nepotism, although she had a work station at the institute, Reed was not listed as staff until the 1970s. She was one of the few women who performed pioneering work in genetics. Her studies first focused on species evolution, for which she undertook statistical analysis and comparison of minute differences in the Drosophila genus of flies. Later, as the couple's interest shifted to human genetics, the Reeds published works on congenital disorders and diseases. They were in favor of genetic counseling based on an understanding of how such disorders occurred, especially in connection with family planning.

In addition to her genetic work, Reed wrote about sexism toward women scientists. An active women's rights advocate, she not only strove to mentor other women in the profession, but to recover the histories of women scientists. Her book American Women in Science before the Civil War (1992), reclaimed the contributions and biographies of twenty-two women who published in science before the American Civil War. Among them were Eunice Newton Foote and Mary Amelia Swift. Reed's own legacy was obscured by her husband's prominence, until her contributions were recovered by Marta Velasco Martín in 2020.

Elizabeth Cleland Wagner was born on August 27, 1912, in Baguio, on the island of Luzon, in the Philippines to Catherine (née Cleland) and John O. Wagner. Her mother was from Killyleagh, Northern Ireland, but was working as a nurse and nurse trainer in the Philippines when she met her husband. Her father served in the Spanish-American War and afterwards worked in various civil service positions during the period when the Philippines was an unincorporated territory of the United States, including as a court interpreter and secretary to the Governor of the Mountain Province on Luzon. Her only sibling died in infancy. In 1917, the family returned to Wagner's home state of Ohio and settled in Fairfield County, where her father operated a fruit orchard.

Wagner grew up near Carroll, Ohio, and graduated from Canal Winchester High School. From 1930, she furthered her studies at Ohio State University, majoring in botany. She excelled in her studies and in her second year had the highest marks in her class. She graduated with honors and was elected to the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa, in 1933. With support from the Ohio State Graduate School, Wagner earned her master's degree in 1934 and a PhD in 1936. After graduation, she did further studies in 1937 in plant research, with funding provided by the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company. Because of biases against women, Wagner was told she should publish her research using only her initials. Thus, her thesis, Effects of Certain Insecticides and Inert Materials upon the Transpiration Rate of Bean Plants, published in 1939, appeared in the name of E. C. Wagner.

After completing her studies, Wagner was hired as a biology and chemistry instructor at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, North Carolina. In 1938, she was promoted to head the school's biology department and worked there until her marriage in 1940. Wagner married James O. Beasley, a pioneering plant geneticist, on September 17, 1940. After their marriage, the couple moved to College Station, Texas, where both were employed at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. Beasley was drafted to fight in World War II in 1942 shortly after Wagner published her second paper and just prior to the birth of their son John in April. Soon after, Beasley went missing in action and Wagner contacted his friend, Sheldon C. Reed, to see if he had any information. She returned to Ohio with their son and lived with her parents during this time, while working on penicillin studies at the Ohio State Research Foundation. Wagner was notified in November 1943, that Beasley had been in killed in action, in September 1943 in Italy. He was subsequently awarded a Purple Heart.

In 1944, Wagner took a post at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, as an assistant professor in plant sciences. In 1945, she relocated to Delaware, Ohio, and taught botany at Ohio Wesleyan University. On August 20, 1946, she and Sheldon Reed, who had remained in touch, married. He was at the time an assistant professor at Harvard University, teaching biology. After their marriage, the couple lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and both worked at Harvard. They began collaborating on research at that time and thereafter jointly published works. Their first project concerned the speciation of flies, which was published as Morphological Differences and Problems of Speciation in Drosophila in March 1948. Reed gave birth to their daughter, Catherine, that same month. By the time the paper was published, the family had moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Sheldon had become the director of the Dight Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota in 1947.

Although Reed had a desk at the Dight Institute from 1947 to 1966, she never held an academic position with the institute because of nepotism rules. Her nominal tie was to the University of Minnesota. She nevertheless continued to work with Sheldon and publish works on genetics. Their next two papers, Natural Selection in Laboratory Populations of Drosophila (1948) and Natural Selection in Laboratory Populations of Drosophila II: Competition between a White Eye Gene and Its Wild Type Allele (1950), focused on Drosophila melanogaster and natural selection. These studies were important in the development of new theoretical and methodological approaches, using statistical analysis and comparison of minute differences, to studying the process of speciation. As a pioneer in the work on Drosophila genetics, Reed was one of the women who contributed to establishing and standardizing processes to study species evolution.