Elizabeth Wagner Reed (August 27, 1912 – July 14, 1996) was an American geneticist and one of the first scientists to work on Drosophila speciation.

Born in the Philippines to a Northern Irish nurse and an American civil servant, she grew up in Carroll, Ohio.

After earning bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees from Ohio State University, she became a teacher with an interest in genetics.

Her studies first focused on species evolution, for which she undertook statistical analysis and comparison of minute differences in the Drosophila genus of flies.

[1][4] Her father served in the Spanish-American War and afterwards worked in various civil service positions during the period when the Philippines was an unincorporated territory of the United States, including as a court interpreter and secretary to the Governor of the Mountain Province on Luzon.

[5] In 1917, the family returned to Wagner's home state of Ohio and settled in Fairfield County, where her father operated a fruit orchard.

Thus, her thesis, Effects of Certain Insecticides and Inert Materials upon the Transpiration Rate of Bean Plants, published in 1939, appeared in the name of E. C.

[5] After completing her studies, Wagner was hired as a biology and chemistry instructor at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, North Carolina.

[3][13] Beasley was drafted to fight in World War II in 1942 shortly after Wagner published her second paper and just prior to the birth of their son John in April.

As a pioneer in the work on Drosophila genetics, Reed was one of the women who contributed to establishing and standardizing processes to study species evolution.

[23][24] They became proponents of genetic counseling, studying parental genes to determine the probable source of children's congenital disorders or diseases, in an effort to mitigate and understand how they occurred.

[25][26] Their best known joint book, which gave Reed lead author position, was Mental Retardation: A Family Study, published in 1965.

She concluded that in her study group marriage and children were the primary reason women abandoned scientific careers.

Aware of the difficulties, Reed tried to encourage members of Sigma Delta Epsilon to continue working and to know their rights.

[29][30][Notes 2] The book, along with Ladies in the Laboratory by Mary R. S. Creese, was acknowledged by Tina Gianquitto, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, whose work focuses in on nineteenth-century women scientists, as being one of two sources that gave extensive historical and biographical information on women scientists of that era.

[30] She was still working at the Dight Institute and was part of the staff in the 1970s, as well as serving as co-director of research for the Minnesota Genetics League.

[29][48] Foote had told Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1868 that women's work was often claimed by men for self-serving reasons.