Jackson Laboratory Bar Harbor, Me

In 1929, the geneticist C. C. Little founded the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine (now the Jackson Laboratory), a major center for the study of mammalian genetics, cancer, and related areas in basic biomedical research.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, Little took an interest in studying the inheritance of coat coloration of mice, and in 1909 developed the first inbred strain of mice for use in genetic and biomedical experimentation. Continuing as a graduate student under William E. Castle, Little received his doctorate in 1914 for research on the inheritance of susceptibility and resistance to tumor transplants in mice, and began a distinguished career that led him to the presidencies of both the University of Maine and University of Michigan before his fortieth birthday. Despite his administrative duties, he remained active in research, and when he left Michigan in 1929 over political disputes with the Regents, he was soon able to secure funding to establish the Jackson Laboratories as an institution for "research in cancer and the effects of radiation."

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