East, Edward Murray

Edward Murray East, (born Oct. 4, 1879, Du Quoin, Ill., U.S.—died Nov. 9, 1938, Boston, Mass.), American plant geneticist, botanist, agronomist, and chemist, whose experiments, along with those of others, led to the development of hybrid corn (maize). He was particularly interested in determining and controlling the protein and fat content of corn, both of which have significant influence upon that grain’s value as animal feed.

A precocious youth, East finished high school at age 15 and then worked in a machine shop for two years to earn money for college. Trained as a chemist, he developed an interest in genetics and in 1900 became an assistant to Cyril George Hopkins of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Illinois, Urbana, where he worked on corn-breeding experiments intended to increase fat and protein content. After receiving an M.S. degree in 1904, he worked for four years as an agronomist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, where he continued his experiments with corn.

East’s genetic investigations, with independent work by the geneticist and botanist George Harrison Shull, led to the development of hybrid corn. The commercial production of hybrid seed corn was made possible by the work of Donald F. Jones, a student of East. In their 1919 book, Inbreeding and Outbreeding, East and Jones laid the basis for the concept of heterosis, or hybrid vigour (that hybrids are often more viable, stronger, and more fertile than inbred strains). East joined the faculty of Harvard University at the Bussey Institution facility in Jamaica Plain in 1909, and he helped found the journal Genetics in 1916. Though he continued his work in genetics, his later contributions to the field were generally of a more theoretical nature. He wrote books on science and international affairs and produced a number of articles on eugenics, an issue of which he was a strong supporter.