Hermann Joseph Muller was an American biologist, geneticist, educator, and author, best remembered for his demonstration that mutations and hereditary changes can be caused by X rays striking the genes and chromosomes of living cells. His discovery of artificially induced mutations in genes had far-reaching consequences, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1946.
Background
Hermann Joseph Muller was born on December 21, 1890 in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of Hermann Joseph Muller Sr., an artisan who worked with metals, and Frances (Lyons) Muller. Muller was a third-generation American whose father's ancestors came to the United States from Koblenz, Germany.
Among his first cousins are Herbert J. Muller, a historian, academic, government official and author, and Alfred Kroeber, a cultural anthropologist. He also had a sister Ada.
Education
Hermann Joseph Muller was brought up in Harlem, first attending public school there and later Morris High School (also public) in the Bronx. There he and his classmates Lester Thompson and Edgar Altenburg founded what was perhaps the first high-school science club. Besides, Muller excelled in public schools.
Though his family (mother, sister Ada, and himself) had very limited means, he was enabled to attend a first-class college - Columbia College - only through the unexpected award of a scholarship (the Cooper-Hewitt), automatically granted to him in 1907 on the basis of entrance examination grades. He spent his summers, during his college years, at such jobs as bank runner and hotel clerk (the latter at $25 a month, plus board, for a 14-hour work-day).
From his first semester, he was interested in biology. Reading by himself in the summer of 1908 R. H. Lock’s (1906) book on genetics, his interests became centered in that field. Courses soon afterwards taken under E. B. Wilson influenced him profoundly, as did also his reading, independently of courses, of works by Jacques Loeb and by other writers on experimental biology and physiology. In 1909 he founded a students’ biology club, which was participated in, among others, by Altenburg, and by two students, Calvin Bridges and Alfred Sturtevant, who had entered Columbia a year later. Muller earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1910 and a Master of Arts in 1911.
In 1911-1912, Muller studied metabolism at Cornell University but remained involved with Columbia. He followed the drosophilists as the first genetic maps emerged from Morgan's experiments, and joined Morgan's group in 1912 (after two years of informal participation).
Muller produced a series of papers, now classic, on the mechanism of crossing-over of genes, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1916. His dissertation established the principle of the linear linkage of genes in heredity.
Later in life, Muller received a Doctor of Science degree from the Universities of Edinburgh (1940), Columbia (1949) and Chicago (1959), and an honorary Doctor of Medicine from Jefferson Medical College (1963).
Called to the Rice Institute (now Rice University), Houston, as an instructor of biology, Hermann Joseph Muller taught varied biological courses from 1915 to 1918 and began studies on mutation. During this time and the two years following, when he was again at Columbia University from 1918 to 1920, as an instructor of zoology, he elaborated methods for quantitative mutation study.
After three years at the Rice University, Houston, Texas, and an interlude at Columbia University, Muller in 1920 became an associate professor of zoology (from 1925 - professor) at the University of Texas, Austin, where he remained until 1932. The 12 years that he spent at Austin were scientifically the most productive in Muller’s life. His studies of the processes and frequencies of mutations enabled Muller to form a picture of the arrangements and recombinations of genes and later led to his experimental induction of genetic mutations through the use of X rays in 1926. This highly original discovery established his international reputation as a geneticist.
After undergoing a nervous breakdown in 1932 due to personal pressures, Muller spent one year at the Kaiser Wilhelm (now Max Planck) Institute in Berlin, where he investigated various physical models for explaining mutations in genes. In 1933 he moved to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and then to Moscow at the invitation of N.I. Vavilov, head of the Institute of Genetics there. In Moscow Muller worked as a Senior geneticist at the Institute of Genetics from 1933 to 1937.
Hermann Joseph Muller left the Soviet Union in 1937. He spent three years at the Institute of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh as a research associate, returning to the United States in August 1940. On returning to the United States, Muller obtained temporary positions at Amherst College, Massachusetts between 1941 and 1945, and, finally, a professorship in zoology during 1945-1967 at Indiana University, Bloomington. At Indiana University Muller was a distingusihed service professor from 1953 to 1964, and became an emeritus professor since 1964. Besides, he was a visiting professor there in 1966-1967. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin during 1965-1966.
Muller has contributed over 300 articles on biological subjects to the scientific publications of learned societies. His principal books are "The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity" with T. H. Morgan and others, 1915 and 1922, "Out of the Night - a Biologist’s View of the Future", 1935, 1936, and 1938, and "Genetics, Medicine and Man" with C. C. Little and L. H. Snyder, 1947.
Hermann Joseph Muller had been listed as a noteworthy biologist by Marquis Who's Who. In 1927 Muller won the Newcomb Cleveland Prize and the Annual Award of the American Association for Advancement of Science.
Moreover, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1946 was awarded to Hermann Joseph Muller "for the discovery of the production of mutations by means of X-ray irradiation".
Besides, Muller was the recipient of the Kimber Genetics award in 1955. He also received the Linnean Society of London's Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1958.
Muller was also designated Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 1963. He has also received honorary memberships and fellowships of many learned societies in the United States, England, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, India, Japan, and Italy, among others.
In 1931 Hermann Joseph Muller was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences. He was also a member of the Institute of Advanced Learning, City of Hope Medical Center, Duarte, California, during 1964-1965.
United States National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
1931
Institute of Advanced Learning
,
United States
1964 - 1965
Connections
Hermann Joseph Muller married Jessie M. Jacobs on June 11, 1923, but they divorced in 1934. He married his second wife Dorothea Kantorowicz on May 20, 1939.
Hermann Muller had a son, David Eugene Muller, and a daughter, Helen Juliette Muller.
