Clarence Cook Little

Clarence Cook Little (October 6, 1888 – December 22, 1971) was an American genetics, cancer, and tobacco researcher and academic administrator, as well as a proponent of eugenics. Early life C. C. Little was born in Brookline, Massachusetts and attended Harvard University after his secondary education at the Noble and Greenough School. Little received an A.B. from Harvard University in 1910, an M.S. in 1912, and D.Sc. in 1914 in zoology, with special focus in the new science of genetics. During World War I, Little served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, attaining the rank of Major. Following the war he spent three years at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1921, he helped found the American Birth Control League with Margaret Sanger and Lothrop Stoddard. Career While studying under W. E. Castle, Little began his work with mice, focusing on inheritance, transplants, and grafts. He also was an assistant dean and secretary to the president. In 1921, he inbred the mouse strain C57BL/6 or "black 6", which is the most popular laboratory mouse to date. His most important research occurred at Harvard, including what some call his most brilliant work, "A Mendelian explanation for the inheritance of a trait that has apparently non-Mendelian characteristics". His observations on transplant rejection became codified into the "five laws of transplant immunology" by George Snell. Little developed the "DBA (Dilute, Brown and non-Agouti)" strain of mice while at Harvard. For his research, he received posthumously the 1978 Cancer Research Institute William B. Coley Award. Little accepted the post of President of the University of Maine in 1922, becoming at age 33 the youngest university president in the country. While there he started a summer laboratory in Bar Harbor. In 1925, he left to become the President of the University of Michigan. His tenure at the university was controversial due to his outspokenness in favor of eugenics, birth control, and euthanasia. He left Michigan in 1929 in order to devote himself to his research at Bar Harbor. With funding from Detroit car manufacturers, he was able to improve the facility for year-round use. He renamed it the "Jackson Laboratory" in honor of one donor, Roscoe B. Jackson of the Hudson Motor Car Corporation.