Hermann Muller.

Geneticist 1890-1967

Hermann Joseph Muller was one of the founding members of the "fly lab" that was initiated by Thomas Hunt Morgan. In the early part of the twentieth century, this lab was the center of important research into the role of chromosomes in inheritance, using the fruit fly Drosophila as a model organism in experiments. The major members included Morgan, Alfred Henry Sturtevant, Calvin Blackman Bridges, and Muller, all working at Columbia University around 1910 to 1915, when their major contributions to classical genetics were carried out. Muller was the only one of Morgan's students to also win a Nobel Prize.

Muller's career was unusual in that he worked in several countries. He was a third-generation American, but he left the United States in 1932 to work in Germany, the Soviet Union, and Edinburgh, Scotland, before returning to his homeland. He had a productive career as...