Hermann (Joseph) Muller - Former graduate students, Former post-doctoral fellows, Worked in lab as undergraduates

Geneticist, born in New York City, New York, USA. He was one of Thomas H Morgan's graduate students at Columbia University, then taught at the Rice Institute (1915–18), where he used the fruit fly Drosophila to discover that X-rays can produce mutations. He returned to Columbia (1918–20), where he theorized that self-replicating genes can control the function of all other cellular components, then became a professor at the University of Texas (1920–32), where he continued his work on the mutagenic effects of X-rays. For his pioneering work in radiation genetics, he was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He took leave from the University of Texas to perform research in Moscow (1933–7), but left after disagreeing with Stalin's endorsement of an environmental, rather than genetic, explanation of inherited traits. He became a lecturer and researcher at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (1937–40), then returned to the USA as a researcher at Amherst College (1940–5). He joined the University of Indiana (1945–64) and remained active as a visiting professor at various institutions until his death. From 1935 he was a proponent of his controversial ‘positive human eugenic’ belief that unusually healthy and gifted men should donate their sperm for the betterment of future generations.

For other Hermann Müllers, see Hermann Müller.

Hermann Joseph Muller (December 21, 1890 – April 5, 1967) was a Nobel Prize-winning American geneticist and educator.

He was born in New York City and attended Columbia University, earning his B.A. A student of Thomas Hunt Morgan, he taught at Rice Institute in Texas from 1915 until 1918, at Columbia from 1918 until 1920, and at The University of Texas from 1920 until 1932, when he moved to Germany, and later to Moscow (in 1934?), where he became senior geneticist of the Institute of Genetics in Moscow, where he remained until 1937.

Former graduate students

H. Oliver Wilson Stone Elof Axel Carlson Seymour Abrahamson William Edgar Trout III Dale Edgar Wagoner Sara Helen Frye Abraham P. Oster

Former post-doctoral fellows

George D. Snell

Worked in lab as undergraduates

Carl Sagan Margaret Edmondson

List of Personel who worked in his lab in Indiana

Biographies

Elof Axel Carlson, Genes, radiation, and society: the life and work of H.J. ISBN 0-8014-1304-4 Nobel Biography

Further reading

Herman Joseph Muller, Modern Concept of Nature (SUNY Press, 1973).