Carson, Hampton L. (Hampton Lawrence), 1914-

Hampton Lawrence Carson is a population geneticist best known for his research with the cytogenetics and evolution of drosophila. From this research he derived his concepts of speciation, particularly founder effects. He served on the faculty of Washington University from 1943 until 1970, when he was appointed genetics professor at the University of Hawaii.

From the description of Papers, 1921-1993. (American Philosophical Society Library). WorldCat record id: 122523790

A population geneticist best known for his work on Drosophila, Hampton Lawrence Carson was born into a distinguished Philadelphia scientific family on November 5, 1914. Carson studied zoology at the University of Pennsylvania, where his great-grandfather, Joseph Carson had been a professor of botany, receiving his AB under Robert Miller Stabler in 1936, and his PhD in 1943. His dissertation on the cytogenetics of darkwinged fungus gnats, "An Analysis of Natural Chromosome Variability in Sciara impatiens " was well received and was published a year later in the Journal of Morphology . According to Theodosius Dobzhansky, this work provided "definitive cytological proof of the chromosomal situations produced by crossing over in inversion heterozygotes." 1

Joining the faculty of Washington University in 1943, Carson rose from assistant professor in 1949 to professor in 1956. In 1951, he was appointed visiting professor of biology at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil and was a Fulbright Research Scholar in zoology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Carson began his association with the University of Hawaii in the summers of 1963 to 1967 as a visiting professor and participant in the Hawaiian Drosophila Project, a cooperative venture between tge Universities of Texas and Hawaii which had been initiated by Elmo Hardy and Wilson Stone in 1963 to study Hawaii's 600 unique drosophilid species. In 1970 Carson was appointed Manoa Genetics Professor in the Department of Entomology at Hawaii, where he continued until his retirement in 1985.

Shortly after completing his dissertation, Carson struck up a fruitful collaboration with Harrison Stalker on Drosophila robusta (see Ms. Coll. 23), and from that point on, devoted much of his scientific attention to Drosophila and to elucidating fundamental questions of selection, reproductive isolation, and speciation. Through a careful series of comparative genetic analyses of populations in New Guinea, Australia, the West Indies, Brazil, and many parts of North America, he developed the concepts of heteroselection and homoselection, but his best known research came through the Hawaiian Drosophila Project. After studying the population genetics of eight species endemic to the Hawaiian islands, Carson proposed that speciation in the island chain was tied to the formation of new islands, with new species being slightly different than those in the nearest island, and progressively more different than those in more distant islands. 2 Carson also contributed to the empirical study of effects and quantum selection.

A prolific writer, Carson published over 250 papers between 1934 and 1989 in journals such as Evolution, Genetics, and American Naturalist . He was active in professional societies, serving terms as president of the Society for the Study of Evolution (1971) and the American Society of Naturalists (1973). In 1979 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1985 he won the Leidy Medal for his work with the Hawaiian Drosophila Project. The International Symposium on Genetics, Speciation and the Founder Principle was held in his honor in June 1985, resulting in a festschrift, Genetics, Speciation and the Founder Principle (Oxford Press, 1994).

Although Carson retired from the University of Hawaii faculty in 1985, he remained active in research by working off a grant from the National Science Foundation. Currently he lives in Hawaii with his wife Meredith, who worked with him on several field expeditions.

From the guide to the Hampton L. Carson Papers, 1921-1993, (American Philosophical Society)