- He graduated from Princeton University, and received a doctorate in zoology from Yale University.
- He taught at Amherst College in Massachusetts and the University of Florida, and later became a research professor at Virginia's Sweet Briar College.
- He was a leading authority on the monarch butterfly. He discovered that it protects itself by converting a toxic compound from its sole food source, the milkweed plant, into a chemical that sickens its predators, mainly birds.
- His parents owned a nursery and rose-growing business.
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