Eclipse

The scientist in me will discard the notion that the stars, planets or infinitesimal planetoids have anything to do with guiding my life, beyond the "butterfly effect".  However, as a human I can't help but notice how celestial events help us to solidify memory and stir reflection.  I can feel the cold and hear the gasp of my 4-year old son when he first sighted Comet Hale-Bopp with his binoculars.  We mark our lives by the return of the Earth to the same position it was on significant days: birthdays; wedding anniversaries; death anniversaries; work anniversaries; commemoration of other significant events; and holidays.  Our nearest star, the Sun, is the ultimate source of energy for life on Earth and a threat to our existence (for example cosmic rays; coronal mass ejections; gamma ray bursts).  We tend to wake with the Sun and sleep in the dark.  Inability to perceive light or working odd hours throws our body clocks into a frenzies such as non-24 sleep-wake disorder.

Beginning of partial solar eclipse 23 October 2014. Photographed
at Park University.The last three solar eclipses have been obscured
by clouds in NW MO

An eclipse occurs when one celestial body casts its shadow onto another.  A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes through the shadow of the Earth.  A solar eclipse occurs when the shadow of the Moon passes over the face of the Earth, apparently obscuring the disc of the Sun.  Eclipses are actually fairly common occurrences as viewed from SOMEPLACE on Earth, but rare in any ONE location on Earth.  You can expect to experience a solar eclipse in any one place on earth every 360ish years, on average.  Most of these events come and go with very little attention from the general populace.

Every now and again, one catches the public imagination.  These are usually total solar eclipses, since it is possible to look at the Sun without risking injury only during totality.  In the center of the path of totality, the sky will darken enough to see the atmosphere of the Sun (corona), planets and stars.  Diurnal animals will seek nighttime refuge and nocturnal animals will start to come out.  As the solar output dims, shadows change accompanied by a palpable cooling.  It is something that is totally out of the ordinary, and novelty sells.

Filtered view of the Sun

This is the experience being sold across the United States since at least 2015.  An eclipse with totality lasting about two and a half minutes.  The width of the total eclipse path in 2017 is about 70 miles and passes across the United States in a southeastward direction from the Pacific Coast of Oregon to the Atlantic Coast of South Carolina.  Some degree of partial eclipse is visible for thousands of miles on either side of the line of totality.  People from all parts of the world descended on little towns all across the United States.  Populations of areas along the path of totality typically doubled overnight.  Sales of all kinds of memorabilia were through the roof: branded eclipse glasses, t-shirts, posters, festivals...etc.

Take time to experience the world now, for you are a long-time dead

Setting up the camera to photograph the eclipse

One thing is for certain about almost any event that strikes a chord with a broad audience: that event will be over-hyped.  Especially if there is a dollar to be made.  While many experienced amusement at the hype, some individuals (even in the popular media) were openly disdainful of anyone that thought this was an interesting event.  There are always the contrarians, those who will go against popular sentiment just because.  There are those that are contrarians because it sells or is fashionable.  If you are not fascinated with eclipses, there is nothing that I can say to you to change your mind, and I won't try.  You have no sense of wonder about the natural world.

I don't have to convince my friend Ed, from Red Wing, Minnesota.  We have both recently lost close friends who were way too young to die.  Knowing that life is fleeting and wanting to experience the spectacle of a total solar eclipse, Ed hopped on a motorcycle with his daughter Marley and staged overnight looking for a break in the weather.  He ended up at the American Legion in Amazonia, Missouri.  Even though the clouds hid totality, he gave the eclipse a thumbs up.  I have some amazing friends.

Darkness falls on Park University as totality nears

There is a stark beauty to a rapidly changing natural canvas - a fantastic out-of-placeness.  More than that, I revel in the accomplishment of thinkers that can record and eke out complex patterns from data 2,500 years before the computer was a thing.  The Babylonians could predict within about 4 hours, when an eclipse would happen, somewhere on Earth.  Edmund Halley would further refine the ability to predict when AND where eclipses would happen.  The ability to predict the occurrence and extent of an eclipse to within a second of precision is a gigantic accomplishment.  Without understanding celestial mechanics and without computers, Babylonian astronomers could pull an astonishingly convoluted pattern out of a big data pile recorded in cuneiform on clay tablets.  It's all Greek to me.

A picture of my friend Ed and his daughter riding from MN to see the
eclipse in MO, taken by Marley and  thieved by me from Facebook

It is only during eclipse that we can really image the corona of the sun - which is key to predicting phenomena such as coronal mass ejections.  An eruption of mass from the Sun aimed at the Earth could bombard us with charged particles and x-rays that would fry our satellites, brick our electronics and destroy the electrical grid.  We got a very little taste of that on 13 March 1989, when a mass ejection hit Earth, causing a widespread blackout in Quebec, Canada.  Understanding space weather is paramount to maintaining our creature comforts, if not our very survival.

Observation of lunar eclipses made by Aristotle allowed him to conclusively state that the Earth is spherical.  He knew from projections of shadows from various geometric figures that a shadow with a rounded edge (such as that of the Earth onto the Moon) could only be produced by a sphere (suck it, Flat-Earthers).  Observations of solar eclipses revealing Bailey's Beads gave us our first indication that the Moon had mountains and valleys.  Eclipses are important because of what we can learn about Earth and its neighbors right here in the comfort of Spaceship Earth.

All That is Now

The eclipse begins

The much ballyhooed Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 arrived to partially cloudy skies at 11:41:06 AM on 21 August in front of Mackay Hall of Park University in Parkville, MO.  The initial obscuration of the Sun's disc by the Moon occurred at about one-o'clock (30 degrees right of straight up).  Lunch was served on the Chapel Lawn, eclipse glasses were passed out and people dispersed over campus to view at various places.  I set up in front of the first building erected on the current campus on a solid, level surface.

Our last glimpse of the Sun in eclipse 21 August 2017

Good views of the eclipse were had all of the way up to the verge of totality.  As more of the Sun's light was blocked out, the shadows got longer, much like a winter's day.  Nadienne noticed that the butterflies had left the flower planters and I noticed that the mosquitoes were biting.  We all noticed that the cicadas started buzzing. About 10 minutes from totality the clouds became heavier, making it almost impossible to see the sun while wearing eclipse glasses or using solar filters, at times.  The clouds totally obscured any view of the sun at about 90 seconds before totality.  In the end, we were about 10 miles too far west.  The clouds held off for a long while to the east.  When totality occurred at about 1:07 PM, we were unable to see anything excepting clouds, but the skies darkened to twilight conditions and lights came on. 

After about a minute of darkness, it lightened up briefly.  Then it started lightning and thundering and the skies opened up, pouring down rain.  The deluge caused flash floods, water overtopped bridges and roads, and Mirror Lake reappeared at the National golf course.  In a time lacking technological savvy, this event would have been recorded with wonder as a Wrath of God event.

Sometimes you use Plan 9

Clouds over St. Joseph, MO on eclipse day

You can predict eclipses and they will come and go on time.  You can predict the weather, but can't do anything about it.  The weather leading up to the eclipse was beautiful.  Nadienne and I enjoyed a nice drive along the path of the eclipse through northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska on Saturday.  Nearly every community had some kind of viewing area set up or even a festival of some kind taking place.  I had scoped out the yard, figuring where the sun was going to be and making sure I knew how to use the solar filter with my camera.  I bought a 12-pack of Leinenkugel Summer Shandy to enjoy while I took pictures in my backyard - right down the center of the path of totality.

When morning broke, the view outside was dismal.  Hardly a hint of blue in the sky.  The eclipse weather was definitely going to suck.  After checking around for weather, we decided to head to Parkville, which was just at the edge of the path of totality.  We'd get about 60 seconds, but it was better than seeing nothing.

Here comes the Sun!  You can't see a thing with
eclipse glasses on!

Then the clouds rolled in while we waited for the eclipse.  The kick in the teeth came as it started to rain.  Dejected, I nearly got in the car and rolled back home to St. Joseph, halted only by the memory of the parking lot that was traffic from Platte City to St. Joseph.  Not really seeing anything good on the cloud map, we decided to stay put and watch a live stream using on the projectors in a lecture room.  Less than a half hour before things got interesting, a break in the clouds appeared and held off long enough for us to see about 49% of the eclipse. Right before totality, thick clouds blocked our view: eclipsis interruptus.  We were clock (and cloud) blocked.  This just proved my theory of life: Always expect the worst - that way you are never disappointed.  If things go badly, you expected it - no disappointment.  If things go well - it's a bonus - no disappointment.  We didn't get to see totality, but we didn't expect to see anything at all - WIN!


And All That is Gone

Start of lunar eclipse 27 September 2015 viewed in St. Joseph, MO

I saw my first eclipse on the 9th-10th of February 1971 in Honolulu, Hawaii.  My Mom woke me up at night, which was weird.  Even stranger was that she wanted me to go outside and look at the Moon.  As we watched, a rounded edge of darkness crept across the face of the Moon.  What the heck was that?  Then Mom told me it was an eclipse.  We watched to totality, when the moon brightened up to a coppery color.  As the Moon began to reappear, I went back in the house to bed.  A local TV station was broadcasting the event - something that is difficult to find unless you stream it over the Internet.

On the night of 25 May 1975, I was sitting at a picnic table outside of our camper in Minnesota waiting for the moon to go into eclipse.  I had found the dates of the eclipses that would be visible to me for the next few years, and was waiting for this one. This time it was my Dad that came outside and watched with me as the Moon was blotted out by the Earth's shadow and then became an intense, angry red as it passed through totality.

I cut class for the first time on 26 February 1979.  The nefarious reason?  To see the solar eclipse that was occurring that day.  While St. Joseph, MO was not in the path of totality, we would be able to see the Sun eclipsed about 85%.  The event did not generate a lot of buzz and our school administration held no viewing parties.   I made my pinhole projector, asked to be excused to the library (which had windows facing the Sun) to do research for a paper, and sat through a few classes to watch as the light dimmed perceptively and then brightened up as the Moon slid over and past our view of the sun.  I did research for a paper all right, just not the one that was currently assigned to me.

Crescent Sun peeking through the clouds

On 10 May 1994, an annular eclipse sorely tested a marriage.  An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon is just far enough away from the Earth in its elliptical orbit that it can't quite obscure the disc of the Sun, resulting in a dark center with a light edge.  The day was very cloudy in Keego Harbor, MI that day.  Just as the eclipse hit annularity, a break in the clouds occurred and through the haze came a filtered image of this ring of sunlight around the Moon.  I asked Nadienne to get my camera, and between us we managed to drop it, shattering it into several pieces and exposing all of the film that had been in it.  The perfect picture...shot to hell.

I have observed close to 20 lunar eclipses and 6 solar eclipses.  Each one is locked away in memory.  I can close my eyes and see, hear and smell what that day or night was like.  What I was looking forward to, what the last and next disappointment would be.  This was my first real chance to see a total eclipse of the Sun, but the weather nicked me by 90 seconds and 10 miles.  Better luck next time.


And All That's to Come

The next lunar eclipse will come soon - a total lunar eclipse will occur the morning of 21 January 2018 and the setting moon will be in total eclipse as viewed from northwest Missouri.  The next North American solar eclipse will be an annular eclipse on 14 October 2023.  The next Great North American Total Solar Eclipse will be on 08 April 2024.  You will find me somewhere on the path from Dallas to Little Rock to Carbondale to Indianapolis to Cleveland to Niagara Falls (Niagara Falls?  Slowly I turned....).  Book your seats now, seven years is sooner than you think.

Great American Eclipse figure for 2024

Solar eclipses are due to a string of coincidences.  We have a moon, the orbital path of which crosses a path directly between us and the Sun from time to time during the new moon, throwing the Moon's shadow onto Earth.  The disc of the Sun is 400 times as large as that of the Moon, but the Moon is almost exactly 400 times closer to Earth than is the Sun.  This geometry makes it possible for the disc of the Moon to totally block out the disc of the Sun, especially if eclipse happens close to perigee (when the Moon is closest to Earth).  If the eclipse happens close to apogee, the increased distance between Earth and Moon decreases the apparent size of the Moon's disc just enough that the Moon cannot totally cover the Sun's disc, resulting in an annular eclipse. 
  

NASA figure of solar eclipse configuration

The force interactions between the Moon and Earth result in the Moon acting like a brake on the Earth.  As the rotation of the Earth slows, the momentum change causes the Moon to slip a little bit further away.  The rate of change in the Earth's daily rotation slows down by about 4 hours every billion years and the distance to the Moon increases by about 3.78 centimeters per year.  In 1.2 billion years (give or take an hour), the Moon will be distant enough from us that its apparent size will always be smaller than that of the Sun - and eclipses will be a thing of the past, replace by transits of the Moon across the Sun's disc.

And Everything Under the Sun is in Tune

I'm being followed by a Moon shadow, Moon shadow, Moon shadow
But the Sun is Eclipsed by the Moon

This time I was armed with a DSLR camera, telephoto lens and eclipse filter, courtesy of Nadienne, Breena and Christian in all.  Thanks to Randy for the film!

Composite view of Sun during eclipse 21 August 2017

And all that is now

And all that is gone

And all that's to come

And everything under the sun is in tune

But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.

Pink Floyd - "Eclipse"

Fossil Safari: Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry

Two buildings cover the bonebed

Beds rich in fossils are very rare.  In a very few places, conditions preserve the fossils in such detail that things such as pigmentation, three dimensional structure and cellular structure can be seen.  These areas are called Lagerstätten or Konservat-Lagerstätten.  And they always seem to be way out in the middle of nowhere.  Is that really necessary?  As you can tell by the picture to the left, the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in Utah is no exception.  It contains the densest concentration of Jurassic dinosaur fossils found anywhere in the world.

It is also noteworthy in the

Bones situated where they were found in 3D-space

abundance of carnivorous dinosaurs.  About 2/3 of the dinosaur fossils found are of theropods, mostly the apex predator Allosaurus fragilis.  Sauropods, the big long-necked dinosaurs like Brachiosaurus, Camarasaurus, and Barosaurus, are found to a lesser extent.  Ornithischians like Stegosaurus are also represented in the bone bed.  To date, over 12,000 bones have been collected and accessed into museum collections.  The Utah Museum of Natural History, University of Utah, Brigham Young University and Princeton University are major excavators of this bonebed, which is now a National Natural Landmark administered by the Bureau of Land Management.

Students excavating on site

Two buildings now cover the part of the bonebed with the densest concentration of dinosaur bone.  This protects the site from sunlight, weather, bone poachers and vandals.  It also makes excavation conditions right tolerable in the summertime.  Excavations are still taking place and bones are uncovered, removed for study and then some are returned for display in the place and orientation in which they were discovered.  When we were there, two college students were working on excavations and acting as interpreters of the bone barn.  Walkways allow the visitors to look over the bonebed without actually touching the surface.

When you study fossils from a

Walkway and bonebed

particular location long enough, you start to be able to identify where they are from by their coloration.  The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry fossils are recognizable by their beautiful black color.  This is due to the unique blends of minerals found at the location during the time that the bone bed was formed.  This fossil bed is in the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation (156-147 million years old).  Specifically, this bed is in the Brushy Basin Member, which is mostly mudstone made from volcanic ash.  Braided rivers flowed from the west into a basin, forming Lake T'oo'dichi' (Gesundheit).  This lake would have been salty and alkaline, much like modern Great Salt Lake.

Allosaurus fragilis maxillary, vertebrae and chevrons

Exactly why this fossil bed is here and why it contains the mix of organisms that it does.  It is very rare for a fossil assemblage to contain more carnivores than it does herbivores.  One idea is that as seasonal droughts set in, ground water would turn the volcanic ash into mud, trapping dinosaurs that came in for a drink.  Packs of young carnivores may have found the temptation to scavenge an easy meal great, especially as the smell of rotting meat increased.  The predators would then become mired in the mud and eventually die of starvation.  A competing hypothesis is that this low spot would be one of the last surviving watering holes and that the carnivores came here to hunt herbivores.  After the supply of herbivore meat was exhausted, the carnivores turned on each other and those left eventually died around here as the result of drought conditions.

Why do we have to be out in the sticks/BFE?

Mostly theropod bones

To have a really good fossil location you first have to have access to exposed rocks of the proper age. The more extreme the climate, the more that physical forces such as cycles of freeze/thawing and erosion can break down sediment and expose fossils. The fossil hunter also has to be at the location at the time that the fossil is exposed and collect the fossil. The ideal area is not impacted greatly by human activities than can destroy the fossils. Fossil sites are often exposed by construction, but paleontologists are usually given a very short time frame to come and remove fossils before the construction project resumes. I have seen more than one Pennsylvanian-era fossil forest fall to the bulldozer in Kansas City.

Long time working

It is likely that dinosaur bones were found by farmers as they drove livestock through the area.  The first organized excavation of record was conducted by F.F. Hintze and the Geology Department of the University of Utah in 1927.  A crew from Princeton University worked the quarry for the 1939-1941 field seasons under W.F. Stokes.  The quarry was idle until 1960 and a variety of institutions have conducted field work there since, including the Utah Museum of Natural History, the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.

Allosaurus fragilis arm

The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry was named a National Natural Landmark in 1965.  The Bureau of Land Management established its very first visitor center on the site in 1968.  A new visitor center has since been constructed and opened in 2007.  This new visitor center is run entirely on electricity gathered using rooftop solar panels.  The visitor center houses exhibits detailing the history and geology of the site.  An excellent mounted Allosaurus skeleton is exhibited here.  If you like dinosaurs and are looking for something a little bit different, this is a nice drive and worth the effort.

Getting There

From I-70, turn north onto UT-10.  Turn right (east) onto UT-155 and go into Cleveland, UT.  If you feel like you have to take a relief break, Cleveland is your last chance at comfortable facilities for about an hour.  In Cleveland, turn right (south) onto S. Center Street/CR-204 (1.5 mi).  Turn left (east) onto S. Flat Bus Loop (0.3 mi), then slightly right onto CR-208 (1.4 mi), then continue onto CR-206 (2.1 mi).  Turn left (north) onto Vicor Reef Rd (4.0 mi).  Turn right onto Dinosaur Quarry Rd/CR-216 (5.1 mi) and then turn slightly left onto the road to the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry Visitors Center (1 mi).  You are there.  Good luck getting back; hope you left some breadcrumbs.

Waypoint: Latitude 39.324019 N; Longitude 110.687683 W

Grave Matters: Walter Sutton

Sutton family marker by mausoleum in section 19, Oak Hill Cemetery

Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence, Kansas has been called "Kansas' Arlington".  Buried here are legends of Kansas territorial and early state history.  Victims of Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence, US senators, US representatives, generals, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, US Cabinet secretary, frontier doctors, publishers and sports legends are interred here.  Many of these are on the "must visit" list of historic burials.  While they are indeed interesting people and warrant discussion at another time, the most historically relevant figure buried here rests in a grave sharing a nice, but modest marker with his parents and siblings.  This person is Dr. Walter S. Sutton, the person who first realized that chromosomes were the carriers of genetic information.

Mendel's peas, Sutton's grasshoppers

According to science standards, every schoolkid in the US should have a grasp of Mendelian genetics.  Using garden peas as his model, Mendel devised a model of genetics that described inheritance by a model in which: inheritance is controlled by discrete factors (we call them genes); indviduals have two copies of each factor; alternate forms of the factor exist to give different trait appearances; these factor pairs are segregated during sex cell formation; factors are recombined randomly at fertilization and the assortment of factors for one trait does not affect the assortment of alleles for other traits.  Sutton examined the behavior of chromosomes during meiosis (sex cell formation) in male grasshoppers (Brachystola magna).  Among his discoveries were that: chromosomes existed in pairs (except for sex chromosomes); the chromosome number is halved during meiotic division; and maternal and paternal chromosomes could be separated from each other randomly.  That sounded a lot like Mendel's factors to Sutton.  This is found in a 1902 paper "On the morphology of the chromosomal group of Brachystola magna" followed up more explicitly in his 1903 paper "The chromosomes in heredity".

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio (or Walter Sutton)? 

Dr. Walter Stanborough Sutton

After the publication of his 1903 paper, Walter S. Sutton's publication record in genetics goes cold.  No follow up, no experimental elaboration of his theory, no concrete explanation for how chromosomes are involved in inheritance.  This is very odd for a scientist with an idea this big.  Sturtevant, Morgan, Watson, Crick, McClintock, Blackburn...all have follow up papers.  Not Sutton.  Why?  Did his situation change?  Mendel had no follow-up paper, but he became the abbot of his monastery.  Kicked out of research by a move to administration.  What about Sutton?

When trying to pick up a trail in research, it is often instructive to go all of the way back to the beginning and follow a paper trail back to where it went cold.  Finding a good clue can allow you to project the trajectory of a life past that point.  Walter Stanborough Sutton was born in Utica, New York on 05 April 1877.  The family relocated to Russell, Kansas when Sutton was young and took up ranching.  Life on the ranch suited Walter, and he learned how to fix and make machinery for working the ranch.

Walter Sutton sits next to his brother William B., who is holding the ball

Mechanical aptitude led Sutton to the University of Kansas in 1896, seeking a degree in engineering. His first summer break would be life-changing. An outbreak of typhoid fever in the family led to the death of his 17-year old brother, John. When Walter returned to classes, he began studies in biology with an eye toward a career in medicine. Working with C.E. McClung, Sutton earned his B.A. (Biology) in 1900 and M.A. (Zoology) in 1901. His master's thesis examined spermatogenesis in Brachystola magna.   Even with this fine record of achievement, Walter found time for recreation and played on the first KU basketball team for Dr. James Naismith.

St. Margaret's Hospital in Kansas City, KS

After graduation from KU, Sutton moved to Columbia University in New York on a postgraduate fellowship working with Edmund Beecher Wilson.  He wrote his two seminal works on the chromosome theory during this time.  In 1903, Sutton abruptly left Columbia, returning to work in the oil fields, suggesting financial motivations for the move.  During his work in the Kansas oil fields, he developed several apparatuses including a method of starting pump engines with high pressure gas and hoists for deep wells.  He would never complete his PhD in Zoology, although it seems he always intended to return to it.

Second Bell Memorial Hospital

In 1905, Sutton returned to Columbia, but this time in medical school.  Given credit for his graduate coursework, he graduated with an M.D. in 1907.  He stayed in New York in a surgical residence program at Roosevelt Hospital and then moved back to Kansas City, KS where he opened a surgical practice and joined the faculty of the University of Kansas School of Medicine as an assistant professor.  In 1911, he became an associate professor and entered the United States Army Medical Reserve Corps as a first lieutenant.  He worked at St. Margaret's Hospital and the second Bell Memorial Hospital doing surgeries.  Documenting his work, Sutton published papers on subjects such as irrigating the abdominal cavity during surgery for a ruptured appendix, delivering ether as anesthesia rectally and inventing a speedometer to monitor the speed of ether delivery.

Lt. Walter Sutton in France

With the outbreak of World War I, Sutton took a leave of absence from the university and joined the Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney Unit of the American Ambulance Hospital in Juilly, France on 08 February 1915.  Still a  young man, he was the head of the surgical staff, overseeing upgrades to the electricity, plumbing, heating and kitchen facilities.  He became proficient in repairing battle wounds of types that had never been seen before.  He noted that many of his patients had not been wounded with bullets or shells, but the force of explosions had turned human body parts into shrapnel.  His engineering background came in handy and Sutton developed new surgical instruments for procedures and developed a fluoroscopic method to find the location of shrapnel prior to doing surgery.

The hospital was located about 23 miles north of Paris and about 40 miles from the battle front.  A stream of Ford ambulances brought wounded every other day to this hospital.  By March 1915, the hospital contained 115 wounded with a capacity of 150.  Sutton himself was in charge of 44 patients. His stay was short.  Walter left France on 26 June and returned to the US on 01 July 1915.  He took up his duties at KU again about two weeks later.  Short though his stay was, he learned a great deal about the treatment of war injuries and contributed a chapter on the subject to Binnie's Manual of Operative Surgery.

“You would hardly believe it, but we had wounded men who were never struck by bullets or projectiles from the enemy’s guns. We had men wounded by being pierced with the shattered bones of their comrades. Men were blown to pieces and parts of their bodies acted as projectiles, killing and wounding others.” - Walter Stanborough Sutton

Walter S. Sutton

Sutton family marker

In September 1916, Sutton signed a contract with C.V. Mosby Publishers to write a book on surgical methods.  Unfortunately, the book would never be written.  Late in 1916, Sutton began suffering from bouts of appendicitis.  On 06 November, he came home early and went to bed.  On 07 November, he operated on three patients, but grew ill.  He was operated on for a ruptured appendix at about 3:30 PM that day.  Peritonitis set in and Walter Sutton died on 10 November 1916 at Christian Church Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri.

Mystery (to me) no longer

Christian Church Hospital at 26th and West Paseo in KC, MO

So the question of Walter S. Sutton and his sudden disappearance from the literature in genetics has been resolved for me.   He left genetics to study surgery, became an excellent surgeon and innovator.  His work made the treatment of wounds caused by modern weapons more effective.  Although Sutton intended to return to work on genetics, his premature death due to peritonitis after his appendix ruptured brought all of his work to an end.  It was a surprise to find out that he had such a tight link to the Kansas City area and was buried in Lawrence, Kansas.  Contrary to his death certificate which notes that he was buried in Highland Park Cemetery in Kansas City, KS here he lies in "Kansas' Arlington", a fitting resident.

Getting There

From I-70 (Kansas Turnpike) take Exit 204 (US-59, US-40) and head south.  You will find yourself on the main drag, Massachussets Street.  Turn left at 13th Street and then turn right onto Oak Hill Avenue into the cemetery.  The Sutton family plot is just east of the mausoleum in Section 19.

Waypoint: Latitude 38.960673 N; Longitude 95.211682 W
Address: 1603 Oak Hill Avenue, Lawrence, KS 66044

Walter S. Sutton's death certificate

Further Reading

Walter S. Sutton Memorial Book

Walter Sutton and Chromosomal Theory: 100 years