Rollins Adams Emerson (May 5, 1873 – December 8, 1947) was an Americangeneticist who rediscovered the laws of inheritance established byGregor Mendel.

Emerson was born on May 5, 1873, in tinyPillar Point, New York, but when he was seven his family moved toKearney County, Nebraska, where he attended public school and theUniversity of Nebraska. He enrolled in the College of Agriculture there, having developed an interest in the local flora and landscaping while quite young.

Emerson graduated in 1897 and began working for the Department of Agriculture as an editor. Soon afterwards he married Harriet Hardin, with whom he had four children. In 1899 he accepted a position at theUniversity of Nebraska, as an assistant professor of horticulture. In 1910–1911 Emerson took a year's leave of absence to pursue graduate work atHarvard University, which awarded him a doctorate in 1913 withEdward M. East as his supervisor, although Emerson spent only one year at Harvard. Emerson continued his work at the University of Nebraska until 1914 when he moved toCornell University in 1914 as professor of plant breeding and head of the department of plant breeding, a position he held until his retirement in 1942. In 1947 he fell ill, and died on December 8, 1947, aged 74.

Emerson's interests while he was at Nebraska included a wide range of projects including culture methods for different fruit and vegetables and the possibility of domesticating wild plants. Usingbeanbreeding techniques he set up an experiment to establish the same results asMendel, of whom he had not heard at the time.

While at Nebraska he also became interested in usingmaize for his research, studying theheritability of pericarp variegation in calico maize. Ears on plants grown from variegated kernels show one pattern of striping, but the pigmentation of the kernel varies, as does the red area. Emerson discovered that the more red there was in the kernels planted, the larger the amount of red ears in the progeny. Emerson became one of the first people to suggest thatmutations could cause variations in organisms.Cornell University, through Emerson's efforts, became a centre formaizegeneticsresearch.^[1] His doctoral students includeGeorge Wells Beadle,Milislav Demerec,Marcus Morton Rhoades,George F. Sprague, andLewis Stadler.^[2]

Emerson was an elected member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences,^[3] theAmerican Philosophical Society,^[4] and the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences.^[5] Emerson was responsible for setting up The Maize Newsletter (http://www.maizegdb.org/mnl.php) in 1932. In 2018, the R. Emerson lifetime achievement award was named in his honor, and has since been awarded annually by the Maize Genetics Cooperation, an outgrowth of the community established by the maize news letter.^[6]

• Morris, R. 1969.Rollins Adams Emerson.
• Nelson, OE. 1993.A Notable Triumvirate of Maize GeneticistsGenetics 135:937-941

• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir

• 1873 births
• 1947 deaths
• American geneticists
• American botanists
• Cornell University faculty
• American medical researchers
• People from Jefferson County, New York
• People from Kearney County, Nebraska
• University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni
• University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• Harvard University alumni
• Scientists from New York (state)
• Members of the American Philosophical Society
• Presidents of the American Society of Naturalists

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