King, Helen Dean (1869–1955)

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King, Helen Dean (1869–1955)

American biologist. Born Helen Dean King in Oswego, New York, in 1869; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1955; elder of two daughters of George (a businessman) and Leonora (Dean) King; graduated from Oswego Free Academy, around 1877; Vassar College, B.A., 1892; Bryn Mawr College, Ph.D., 1899; never married; no children.

Known for her pioneering research on the breeding of rats, biologist Helen Dean King was the subject of more than a little controversy during her career. Like recent experiments in cloning, King's research on inbreeding laboratory rats was greeted by hysterical headlines and public denunciation.

Helen King was born in 1869 and raised in Oswego, New York, the daughter of a successful businessman. She graduated from Oswego Free Academy and received her B.A. from Vassar before pursuing doctoral studies at Bryn Mawr. There, she majored in morphology under Thomas Hunt Morgan, known as the "father of modern genetics," and minored in physiology and paleontology under J.W. Warren and Florence Bascom . Completing her degree in 1899, she remained at the college for five years, serving as an assistant in biology. From 1906 to 1908, she was an assistant in anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, after which she took a teaching post at Philadelphia's Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology. She remained at Wistar for the next 41 years, working her way up from assistant to assistant professor and finally to professor of embryology. In addition to teaching, she served on the Institute's advisory board for 24 years. In 1932, she was awarded the Ellen Richards Research Prize of the Association to Aid Scientific Research for Women.

King's research on albino and Norway rats was considered controversial partly because she was a woman. One amazed reporter commented on "the spectacle of a woman holding a rat in the palm of her hand," and further noted that he could hardly "believe that one of the greatest authorities of rats in the country is a very human and thoroughly feminine woman." The results of King's experiments in inbreeding were also somewhat misinterpreted. After studying 25 generations of albino rats to determine the effects of inbreeding, King concluded that brothersister matings produced animals that were superior in body size, fertility, and longevity. "I do not claim that this superiority is due solely to the fact that the animals were inbred," she added, "neither do I wish to assert that, in general, inbreeding is better than outbreeding for building up and maintaining the general vigor of a race." Some newspaper reports, however, implied that King considered incest taboos unnecessary. "Dr. King Quizzed on Kin Marriage Theory: Home Folk Shocked by Advocacy of Human Inbreeding," shouted one headline. Public responses to the reports ranged from amusing to violent. A California woman wrote asking King to find her a husband. A young man from Clark University, calling himself a "Christian and a student," wrote that "he wished someone would kill her, and if they didn't he would do it himself."

From 1919 to her retirement in 1949, King devoted herself to research involving domestication of the Norway rat, which was considered too wild to breed in the laboratory. Again, she captured the public's imagination by producing a variety of mutant breeds, including curlyhaired rats, waltzing rats, and chocolate-colored rats. More important, however, King succeeded in producing rats with the specific genetic characteristics required for particular research projects. Her work also made it possible to maintain a pure strain of laboratory animal. Helen King died in Philadelphia in 1955, age 85.