Archives West Finding Aid

Arthur H. Whiteley was a University of Washington professor of Developmental Biology and a past chair of the Division of Developmental Biology of the American Society of Zoologists. He was world renowned as a sea urchin developmental biologist. He and his wife often worked together at the Friday Harbor Laboratories. Following Helen Whiteley’s death in 1990, Arthur planned a memorial for her at Friday Harbor. The Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center , which opened in 2000, provides a retreat for scholars and artists to contemplate, create and write. It is funded by the Helen R. Whiteley Foundation.

Arthur Whiteley was born in Dowagiac, Michigan on Dec. 17th, 1916. His father ran a daily newspaper and was a State Senator and Commissioner of Conservation. Arthur received a BA in Biology from Kalamazoo College, in 1938, and a MS in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1939. That same year, he entered graduate School at the University of California at Berkeley. There he met Helen Riaboff, an exceptionally bright undergraduate student of Microbiology, Zoology and Chemistry.

As for most young people at the time, the entry if the United States into WII changed Arthur’s educational timeline. In 1942 he moved to Princeton University where he contributed to research on war-related subject of bends as it applied to aviators. He married Helen in San Francisco in 1944, returned to Princeton to finish his Ph. D in 1946, completed a year of post-doc training at the at the University of Texas in Galveston and another at California Institute of Technology. It was there where he began his life-long research into the development of Sea Urchin embryos.

In 1948, the Whiteleys moved to Seattle, Arthur beginning his research and teaching career in the UW Zoology Department, and Helen enrolled in a Ph. D program. She received her Doctorate in Microbiology in 1951. Summers were spent at Friday Harbor, often with the couple working on collaborative projects.

The years at the University of Washington were punctuated by several sabbatical trips abroad. The first was to Copenhagen on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955. The second was to Japan in 1962. In Japan, Arthur and Helen established life-long contacts with whom they both would collaborate over the years. They returned in 1982 to work on a collaborative project with Eizo Nakano.

Upon his retirement in 1985 Arthur embarked on a new cause prompted by the concerns of Friday Harbor residents over the impact that Salmon farming had on the environment.

Arthur’s father was Harry H. Whiteley, born in Gaylord Michigan in 1882. He was both a journalist and politician. In 1914 he was elected to the Michigan State House of Representatives, and in 1922 he was elected a State Senator, serving two terms. In 1915 he also became Managing Editor of the Dowagiac Daily news. At the conclusion of his two terms as State Senator, Whitely was appointed to the newly formed State Conservation Commission. He served on the commission for 21 years, from 1927 until 1948, and as its chair from 1943-1945. In 2009, he was inducted into the Michigan United Conservation Clubs’ hall of fame for his role in promoting an apolitical, science-based management of Michigan’s natural resources.

Arthur’s grandfather, Henry Whitely was born in Durham, England in 1853, but emigrated to the United States while very young He married Luella Eliza Piper (Lulu) in 1878 and they had four children, of which Harry was the eldest. The family settled in Millersburg, Michigan 1900.