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The Thomas Hunt Morgan Era in Biology

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The Thomas Hunt Morgan Era in Biology Why did Caftan officials pursue a biologist so near retirement by Judith R. Goodstein to establish the schoots division of biology? This story 0/ the genesis 0/ biology at Caltech is The biochemist Henry Borsook liked to tell excerpted/rom Millikan's School: A History of the about a conversation Thomas Hunt Morgan had California Institute of Technology (© judith R. with the physicist Albert Einstein, a campus Goodrtein) and is reprinted here with pemziSJiol1 of the visitor in the early thirties. At a point in the publisher. W. W. Norton & C01llpcmy. Probably no conversation, Einstein supposedly asked, "What one wm in c/ better positioll to u'rite Calterh's history in hell are you doing in a place like thisl " "The thcm judith Goodstein. who, since becoming the future of biology rests in the application of the Imtittite'sjirJt archillist ilz 1968, hm had an inside methods and ideas of physics, chemistry, and trark on learning 11'hat went on when. In the yettrs mathematics," replied Morgan. The physicist sinre. she has built the arrhilles, nou' housed in persisted. "Do you think you will ever be able to expanded ncu,/acilities in the Beckman Imtitute. into a explain in terms of chemistry or physics so notable resource in science bistory-cmd ctlso knOUT important a biological phenomenon as first love)" where all the bodies are bllried Research for the book. "What did you say to that one)" Borsook asked u'hirh apjJropriately apjJearJ in time j()r Calteeh's Morgan afterward. "I tried to explain something Ce7Ztennial, cl'as supported by the HClples Foundcttion. about the connection between sense organs and In addition to her post as arciJillirt. Goodstein has cdw the brain and hormones." "You didn't believe Thomas Hunt Morgan, with flies, at Columbia been a faculty ass(){iate since 1982 and registrar since that yourself, did you)" Borsook asked. "No," University in 1917. J 989. She ectrned her BA frail! Brooklyn College in said Morgan, "but I had to say something to J 960 and PhD from the Unillersity o/VvmhillgtoJl in him." 1969. Millikan's School u'ill be cte'ailable in What he "had to say" says a lot about his bookstores in October or lIlay be ordered from the plans, however. Thomas Hunt Morgan was 62 publisher lcith the coupon Oil the back cot'er. when he came to Caltech in 1928. By then, he had earned a worldwide reputation as a remark­ The establishment of a Department of able teacher, a clear writer, and an impressive Biology, rather than the traditional depart­ researcher. In 1933, he would win the Nobel ments of Botany and Zoology, calls for a word Prize for his discovery of the chromosomal of explanation. It is with a desire to lay mechanism by which character traits are passed emphasis on the fundamental principles on from parent to offspring through the interac­ underlying the life processes in animals and tion of genes. plants that an effort will be made to bring together, in a single group, men whose All of that work had been accomplished in one common interests are in the discovery of the room at Columbia University that held a bunch unity of the phenomena of living organisms of bananas hanging in the corner and eight desks rather than in the investigation of their crammed into a space measuring 16 feet by 23 manifold diversities. feet. In the fly room, as it was known, Morgan -THOMAS HUNT MORGAN, 1927 had elevated the lowly fruit fly, the Drosophila Engineering & Science/Summer 1991 13 Contributing to the squalor was Morgans habit 0/ squashing his flies (after he'd finished counting them) on his 17lelanogaster, into the most famous experimental mold it attracted. Along one wall stood a organism in the world. kitchen table used by the student hired to wash counting plate, Why did Cal tech officials pursue a biologist so bottles and prepare fly food. This area of the which he left near retirement to establish the school's division room was Morgan's only concession to hygiene. unwashed on his of biology? The answer to the question begins Bridges, an unremitting tinkerer, sat at a desk with the ways and means of Morgan's Drosophila covered with odd-looking pieces of apparatus he desk. group at Columbia. had made from items at hand. Capable of long According to the Russian geneticist Theodo­ periods of routine work and intense "fits and sius Dobzhansky, Morgan ran the fly room by his SpurtS" of ingenuity, Bridges gradually over­ own rules. Traveling on a Rockefeller-financed hauled Morgan's primitive laboratory techniques: International Education Board fellowship, he designed a binocular microscope (most Dobzhansky in 1927 arrived in New York from workers used a hand lens to examine flies; Leningrad thinking that Morgan was "just next Morgan used a jeweler's loupe), invented new to God" and his laboratory "close to Heaven." To ways to etherize flies, developed new incubators, his dismay, he found what he called "a very small, improved culture bottles, and whipped up poorly equipped, and positively filthy" labora­ alternative foods for flies. tory, run by a man obsessed by "pathological Bridges had his faults, but jealousy, according stinginess." The Morgan operation made to Morgan, was not one of them: "In fact, one of Dobzhansky's laboratory facilities back home in his most admirable traits was his freedom from Russia look very good in comparison. Morgan's priority claims of any kind." Morgan first met longtime co-workers Calvin B. Bridges and Bridges in 1909 when he took Morgan's courses Alfred H. Sturtevant sat and worked in the same in general biology and embryology. Hoping to room, along with graduate students, postdoctoral find research work, Bridges put himself through fellows, like Dobzhansky, and assorted visitors, Columbia on scholarships and odd jobs. Morgan ranging from Yoshitaka Imai, a Japanese geneti­ hired him in 1910 to wash glassware, but gave cist, to Alexander Weinstein, a recent fly-room him a desk and promoted him to the job of PhD. Often, all the desks were occupied, in­ breeding flies and looking for mutants after cluding the two reserved for guests. Bridges spotted a fly with bright eyes in a dirty Cleanliness was unknown here. The workers bottle. Bridges excelled at finding new mutants, competed for space with cockroaches that which he "immediately announced." This skill reproduced in awesome numbers. Contributing (Sturtevant insisted he "had the best 'eye' for new to the squalor was Morgan's habit of squashing types") paid off in 1916, when he published, in his flies (after he'd finished counting them) on his the first issue of Genetics, a detailed paper dealing counting plate, which he left unwashed on his with flies that had extra and missing desk. As the pile oflifeless flies grew, so did the chromosomes. Not only could Bridges explain 14 Engineering & Science/Summer 1991 great many advantages, particularly for a foreign guest. You can ask anyone a question you wish to enlighten yourself on any problem which Left: Morgan's fly­ arises. You also listen to the conversation room crew didn't flinch from eating between the people. As far as training is con­ among their speci­ cerned, nothing better can really be imagined." mens_ Here a lunch Jammed with people and paraphernalia, Morgan's celebrates the return of Sturtevant (front laboratory, in short, was an ideal training ground left, holding beer for budding experimental biologists, good for bottle and cigar, from everything from selecting projects on which to the Army in 1919_ Clockwise around the base PhD research to testing new techniques and table from Pithecan­ analyzing experimental data. thropos wearing Sturtevant tells a similar story. "Everybody Sturtevant's old uni­ form are Muller, did his own experiments with little or no super­ Morgan, Lutz, Mohr, vision," he wrote on one occasion, "but each new Huettner, Schrader, result was freely discussed by the group." Anderson, Weinstein, Dellinger, and Bridges Morgan's Drosophila group did not go in for (with book,. organized coffee breaks, nor did it set aside a Right: Calvin Bridges, certain time of the day for laboratory discussion. who began his career with Morgan as a bot­ "Instead," recalled Sturtevant, "we discussed, tle washer, was pro­ planned, and argued-all day every day." He moted to the job of added, ''I've sometimes wondered how any work breeding flies, and given a desk, which these exceptions; he provided convincing proof got done, with the amount of talk that went on." he covered with hand­ of the chromosome theory of heredity. Bridges But Morgan did have one cardinal rule: you had made pieces of appa­ delighted in building up and studying the to pick your own research topic. ratus as well as bottles of flies. Drosophila stocks and mapping the position of To do otherwise could be academically fatal, as mutant genes in each chromosome. He "was so one aspiring Drosophila geneticist, Edgar Alten­ good at this that he contributed many more burg, discovered. Having been given desk space mutants than did the rest of us," Sturtevant in the fly room, Altenburg asked Morgan to once admitted. suggest a fruit fly problem for graduate work. Sturtevant owed his desk in Morgan's labora­ Close by Morgan's office was the aquarium room. tory to a childhood passion for recording the He took Altenburg there, dipped his finger in a pedigrees of horses. A book on Mendelism that tank of stagnant water, and held it up to the he read as a college sophomore opened new light.
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