Walter Stanborough Sutton (April 5, 1877 – November 10, 1916) was an American geneticist and biologist whose most significant contribution to present-day biology was his theory that the Mendelian laws of inheritance could be applied to chromosomes at the cellular level of living organisms.

[1] Sutton distinguished himself as a student by being elected to both Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi and receiving both bachelor's and master's degrees by 1901.

There he was able to perfect a device to start large gas engines with high pressure-gas and develop hoisting apparatuses for deep wells.

While he continued to work on patents associated with oil drilling, Sutton also began at this stage to apply his mechanical aptitude to improving medical instruments.

In addition to his clinic duties at Roosevelt Hospital, Sutton was also able to work with the Surgical Research Laboratory at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Sutton and others from his days at Columbia and Roosevelt arrived at College of Juilly on February 23 where hospital facilities had been set up only 40 miles from the front lines of World War I.

His inventive aptitude was perhaps never more valued as he developed fluoroscopic techniques to identify and localize shrapnel within the soldier's bodies and then removed the foreign items with instruments of his own design.