[1] While teaching at Buena Vista College he met his future spouse Alice Jane Tozier, a teacher in English and Latin, with whom he bought a house in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
[1] His first significant contribution was a problem proposed by Professor Charles Otis Whitman, titled 'the process of gastrulation in the pigeon's egg.
[1] He helped make many reforms to the course structure at the University of Texas, ensuring adequate training was given to undergraduates through the use of an integrated series.
[1] When Muller managed to prove that X-rays cause mutations in Drosophila, Patterson shifted his focus towards the field of genetics and speciation.
[1] He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1941 and made the vice president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section F. In 1947 he received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal for his paper on isolation mechanisms and elected constitutional president of the International Society for the Study of Evolution.
[1] In 1952 Patterson published, with coauthor Wilson S. Stone, his greatest work, entitled Evolution in the Genus Drosophila detailing geographic isolation's role in genetics.