Muller, Hermann Joseph (redirected from Hermann Muller)

Muller, Hermann Joseph (mŭl`ər), 1890–1967, American geneticist and educator, b. New York City, grad. Columbia (B.A., 1910; Ph.D., 1916). A student of Thomas Hunt Morgan, he taught (1915–18) at Rice Institute, Tex., at Columbia (1918–20), and at the Univ. of Texas from 1920 until he became senior geneticist (1933–37) of the Institute of Genetics in Moscow. In 1945 he became professor of zoology at Indiana Univ. His method for recognizing spontaneous gene mutation led to his discovery of a technique for artificially inducing mutations by means of X rays that has since had broad theoretical and practical application. For this discovery he was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. His writings include Out of the Night (1935), Genetics, Medicine, and Man (1947; written with others), and Studies in Genetics (1962). He also wrote articles on the biological effects of atomic radiation.

---

Muller, Hermann Joseph

(born Dec. 21, 1890, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died April 5, 1967, Indianapolis, Ind.) U.S. geneticist. He attended Columbia University. The possibility of consciously guiding human evolution provided the initial motivation for his research, leading him to work in the Soviet Union's Institute of Genetics. He later assisted the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War before returning to the U.S. in 1940; he thereafter taught principally at Indiana University (1945–67). In 1926 he first induced genetic mutations through the use of X rays, and he demonstrated that mutations are the result of breakages in chromosomes and of changes in individual genes. His receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1946 increased his opportunities to publicize the dangers posed by accumulating spontaneous mutations in the human gene pool as a result of industrial processes and radiation, and he devoted much energy to increasing public awareness of the genetic dangers of radiation.

---

Muller, Hermann Joseph 

Born Dec. 21, 1890, in New York; died Apr. 5, 1967, in Indianapolis, Ind. American geneticist.

Muller graduated from Columbia University in 1910. In 1915 he defended his doctoral dissertation on the mechanism of crossing-over. Between 1915 and 1925, Muller taught in several American higher educational institutions. From 1925 to 1932 he was a professor at the University of Texas. From 1933 to 1937, at the invitation of N. I. Vavilov, Muller worked in the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow. From 1937 to 1940 he taught genetics at the University of Edinburgh. From 1945 he was a professor at the University of Indiana.

In 1912–15, Muller (with T. H. Morgan, A. H. Sturtevant, and C. Bridges) contributed to the elaboration of the chromosome theory of heredity. He studied the lawlike regularities of mutation (1920–32) and demonstrated the possibility of artificially inducing mutations (1927) by means of X rays. These experiments created the groundwork for radiation genetics. Muller received the Nobel Prize in 1946. He was an honorary member of several foreign academies of sciences and scientific societies.

WORKS

Out of the Night: A Biologist’s View of the Future. New York, 1935.
In Russian translation:
Izbrannye raboty po genetike. Moscow-Leningrad, 1937.

REFERENCE

Carlson, F. A. “The Legacy of Hermann Joseph Muller (1890–1967).” Canadian Journal of Genetics and Cytology, 1967, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 436–48.

A. E. GAISINOVICH