When Wimsatt was a student at St. John's College High School[3] in Washington, D.C., he attended a lecture by Professor Arthur "Doc" Allen (who founded the Cornell Lab of Ornithology).

Due to his mother’s illness, he was unable to transfer from Catholic University in Washington to Cornell, but after her death he did.

He spent three sabbatical leaves at the University of Arizona College of Medicine working with Dr. Philip Krutzsch, who shared similar research interests.

A look at his publications reveals his ability to use novel approaches in diverse areas of reproductive biology (e.g., embryology, placentation, and fetal membranes), ecological physiology, hibernation, and the integumentary, urinary, and digestive systems.

He helped found the Annual North American Symposium on Bat Research and in 1981 he was awarded the Gerrit R. Miller prize “for his outstanding record of contributions to chiropteran biology.”[2] Wimsatt was born in Washington D. C., the son of Alma Engebretson Cheyney and William Church Wimsatt.