Katherine Brehme Warren Explained

Katherine "Kitty" Brehme Warren (1909–1991) was an American geneticist and scientific editor known for her work at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Early life and education

Warren was born Katherine Suydam Brehme in New York City in 1909, to parents Almira and Franklin Brehme.^[1] She graduated from Barnard College in 1930^[2] and earned a doctorate in zoology from Columbia University.^[3] She married fellow scientist Charles O. Warren in 1939.^[4]

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Brehme was a student of Calvin Bridges and after his death the Assistant Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Milislav Demerec pushed for Warren's appointment to complete some of Bridges's unfinished work.^[5] The project was supported by a fellowship from the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the completed work, The Mutants of Drosophila melanogaster (1944), became a classic in the field.^[6] For decades "Bridges and Brehme" served as an essential reference for geneticists and later formed the backbone of subsequent scholarship and, ultimately, the online resource FlyBase.^[7]

Warren served as the executive director of the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology.^[3] As Symposia editor from 1941-1958, she was responsible for manuscript preparation, proofreading, and indexing.^[8] In addition to her serious editorial duties, she introduced a nonexistent scholar, J. C. Foothills of Tennessee Intermountain College, whose name was derived from her favorite expression of frustration: "Jesus Christ in the foothills!"^[9]

Teaching and administration

Warren taught biology at Adelphi University, Hofstra University, Cornell University Medical College, and Wellesley College. She later spent a decade as a grants administrator at the National Institutes of Health, retiring in 1971.^[3]

Personal life

Warren suspended her teaching career for several years after the birth of her children, but did not interrupt her work with the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia.^[10] The couple divorced in 1961, with Warren retaining custody of her three teenage daughters.^[11]

Notes and References

1. Book: Cook, Robert Cecil. Who's who in American Education: A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Living Educators of the United States. 1944. 134.
2. Web site: Mortarboard 1930. Barnard Digital Collections. 12 April 2018.
3. News: Katherine Warren, Research Scientist, 82. The New York Times. April 9, 1991. en.
4. Book: Thomas John Hall. The Hall Family of West River and Kindred Families. 1941. Rue Publishing Company. 165.
5. "Cold Spring Harbor Summers," Calvin Blackman Bridges, Unconventional Geneticist (1889-1938) (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library and Archives, 2013), http://library.cshl.edu/exhibits/bridges/_pages/page6_CSHL.html (accessed 8 February 2015).
6. "Kitty Brehme Warren," Archives at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, http://library.cshl.edu/personal-collections/kitty-brehme (accessed 8 February 2015).
7. Elof Axel Carlson, "Calvin Bridges and the Development of Classical Genetics," Calvin Blackman Bridges, Unconventional Geneticist (1889-1938) (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library and Archives, 2013), http://library.cshl.edu/exhibits/bridges/_pages/page4_carlson.html (accessed 8 February 2015); "Cold Spring Harbor Summers."
8. "Kitty Brehme Warren."
9. Jan A. Witkowski, "1955: Population Genetics: The Nature and Causes of Genetic Variability in Population, Vol. XX," Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, http://symposium.cshlp.org/site/misc/topic20.xhtml (accessed 8 February 2015).
10. Ruth W. Tryon, Investment in Creative Scholarship: A History of the Fellowship Program of the American Association of University Women, 1890-1956 (Washington, D.C.: American Association of University Women, 1957), https://archive.org/stream/investmentincrea028228mbp/investmentincrea028228mbp_djvu.txt (accessed 8 February 2015).
11. Katherine Brehme Warren to Bentley Glass, July 20, 1961, Bentley Glass papers, American Philosophical Society.