Herbert and Margaret Eastlick Papers, 1860-1981

Herbert (1908-2002) and Margaret (1911-2004) Eastlick were professors in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University. Margaret Gardiner Eastlick taught bacteriology and pathology, and supervised the pathology laboratories for 23 years.

Herbert was born and raised on a homestead in Montana. He earned his bachelor's degree in Biology at the University of Montana in 1930. He then went on to pursue his master's and doctoral degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. While in graduate school, he met and married fellow graduate student, Margaret "Peg" Gardiner. In 1939, he received a National Research Council Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation and went to work at the University of Chicago under the supervision of well-known embryologist Paul Weiss. In the same year, Eastlick made the first successful transplant between two different species of warm-blooded vertebrates: the growth of a duck leg on a chicken. It was at the University of Chicago that Eastlick met Washington State College president E.O. Holland, who hired him as an assistant professor of Zoology.

For 33 years (1940-1973) Eastlick taught att WSU and was widely respected for his research on origin of pigment cells in vertebrates, development of muscle tendon, fat bodies, and host-graft reaction. He was the chairman of the Department of Zoology from 1947-1964 and the chair of the Faculty Executive Committee in 1955-1956. He also was vital to the creation of the nationally ranked Honors Program at WSU.

In 1979, the Herbert and Margaret Eastlick Biological Sciences Building at WSU was named in their honor. The Eastlick Estate was pledged to the university to fund scholarships for undergraduates. scholarships.