Thomas Hunt Morgan

Thomas Hunt Morgan (25 September 1866 – 4 December 1945) was an American geneticist and embryologist. Morgan took his PhD at Johns Hopkins University in 1890, and researched embryology while at Bryn Mawr College.

After the rediscovery of Mendelian inheritance in 1900, Morgan switched his research to the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In 1904, E.B. Wilson invited Morgan to join him at Columbia University. This move freed Morgan to focus fully on experimental work.Allen, Garland E. 1978. Thomas Hunt Morgan: the man and his science. Princeton University Press, pp 68-70. 
In his famous Fly Room at Columbia,  Morgan was able to show that genes are carried on chromosomes and are the mechanical basis of heredity. These discoveries formed the basis of the modern science of genetics.

Morgan moved to California in 1928 to head the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). Research was focused on genetics and evolution; experimental embryology; physiology; biophysics and biochemistry.

He was given the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933. It was the first one given for genetics, for his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity. The prize was not shared with the lab's main researcher, Alfred Sturtevant, a decision of the Nobel Committee which was certainly controversial.Kohler, Robert E. 1994. Lords of the fly: Drosophila genetics and the experimental life. Chicago.

Morgan's early work with Drosophila was on the associations known as 'coupling' and 'repulsion', discovered by English workers in 1909 and 1910 using the Sweet Pea. These were, in reality, the same phenomenon, which was later called linkage. Morgan's first papers dealt with the demonstration of sex linkage of the gene for white eyes in the fly, the male fly being heterogametic (XY).

During his distinguished career, Morgan wrote 22 books and 370 scientific papers, and, as a result of his work, Drosophila became the main 'model organism' in genetics. The Division of Biology he started at the California Institute of Technology produced seven Nobel Prize winners.

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Category:1866 births
Category:1945 deaths
Category:American geneticists
Category:American Nobel Prize winners
Category:Embryologists
Category:Scientists from Kentucky
Category:People from Lexington, Kentucky
Category:American developmental biologists
Category:Columbia University faculty
Category:California Institute of Technology faculty
Category:Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winners