Charles Sedgwick Minot

Charles Sedgwick Minot (December 23, 1852 – November 19, 1914) was an American anatomist, histologist, naturalist, professor of comparative anatomy at Harvard Medical School, and the inventor of an automatic rotary microtome. He was elected in 1882 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1896 to the American Philosophical Society, and in 1897 to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Minot was president of the American Society of Naturalists for a one-year term from 1894 to 1895 and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for a one-year term from 1901 to 1902.

Quotes

... many are the writers who from the literary point of view have presented us, sometimes with profound thought, often with beautiful images connected with the change from youth to old age. We need but to think of two books familiar more or less to us all—that ancient classic, Cicero’s De Senectute, the great book on age, one might almost say, from the literary standpoint, and that of our fellow-citizen, my former teacher and professor at the Medical School, Dr. Holmes, who in his delightful ’Autocrat’ offers to us some his charming speculations upon age.
- The Problem of Age, Growth, and Death. Lectures delivered in March 1907 at the Lowell Institute, Boston. 1907. p. 481. (117 pages; reprinted from Popular Science Monthly, 1907, vol. LXXI, in 6 parts in the June issue, pp. 481–496, followed by the issues from August to December)

The phenomena of life are so complicated that they can be analyzed only by the most many-sided investigations. If one wishes completely to master the science one would have to be not only a biologist in the stricter sense, but also a chemist, a physicist, and a geologist.
- Modern Problems of Biology. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son & Company. 1913. p. 2. (124 pages; with 53 illustrations)

The size of the cell is of the greatest significance to biologists. Cells for the most part are rather small, and the size is extremely variable. The cells of the human body, according to an estimate I have made, have an average diameter of perhaps 0.014 mm. Variations, however, are considerable; some cells, like the blood-corpuscles, are very small; certain nerve cells, on the other hand, attain a considerable size. The largest cells of all, known to us at present, are eggs. Those of certain animals appear as true giants in comparison with other cells. The largest eggs occur in birds. The entire yolk of the bird's egg corresponds to but a single cell.
- p. 5

Minot's laboratory text-book is written from the standpoint of the anatomist rather than of the biologist. In this point of view lie both its limitations and its excellencies. It is the outgrowth of the actual experience of one of the best known of the teachers of embryology, and hence is strongly individualized.
- Frank Rattray Lillie, (May 22, 1903) "book review of A Laboratory Text-Book of Embryology (1903) by Charles Sedgwick Minot". Science 17 (438): 817–819. p. 817 p. 819