Plough was born on April 5, 1892 in New York City. He attended Amherst College, graduating in 1913, and went on to study at Columbia, receiving his MA in 1915, and his PhD in 1917. After serving as a fellow at Columbia for a year, Plough returned to Amherst where he joined the biology department, and continued to serve as a professor at Amherst until his retirement in 1959. Plough led a distinguished career as a geneticist, publishing more than 30 papers on technical subjects in biology over his lifetime. He spent many summers teaching and doing research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., where he discovered four new species of Ascidians, a specialized phylum of marine chordates. Plough also specialized in radiation-induced mutations, and acted as consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission in the early 1950s. Plough served in the US Army Sanitary Corps in both World Wars as a bacteriologist.
From the description of Plough anthropology and evolution course materials, 1939-1958. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 51625420
