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Thomas Hunt Morgan
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Thomas Hunt Morgan (September 25, 1866 – December 4, 1945) was an American geneticist and embryologist. Morgan received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1891 and researched embryology during his tenure at Bryn Mawr. Following the rediscovery of Mendelian inheritance in 1900, Morgan's research moved to the study of mutation in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In his famous Fly Room at Columbia University Morgan was able to demonstrate that genes are carried on chromosomes and are the mechanical basis of heredity. These discoveries formed the basis of the modern science of genetics. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 he was the first person awarded the Prize in genetics, [F]or his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity[1].
Thomas Hunt Morgan, born on Sept. 25, 1866, in Lexington, Ky., was the son of Charlton and Ellen Morgan. He was descended on both sides from English Cavalier stock. In 1886 he entered the State College of Kentucky and later studied at Johns Hopkins University, where he divided his time between morphology and physiology. In 1890 he received his doctorate for a paper on the embryology and phylogeny of sea spiders. In 1891 he served as professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College, after which he went to Europe for further study, first in Germany and then at the famous zoological station at Naples, Italy. There he met Hans Driesch, the philosopher-scientist who believed in "vitalism."
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In 1931 Beadle went to work in the genetics laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morganat the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California.Morgan had pioneered genetics work on the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Drosophila melanogaster As Beadle studied inherited characteristicssuch as eye color, he began to think that genes might influence heredity bychemical means. When he left California for Paris in 1935, he continued thisline of work with Boris Ephrussi at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique. Carefully transplanting eye buds from the larvae of one type of mutant fruit fly to larvae of another, Beadle showed that eye color in the insects is not a quirk of nature but the result of a long chain of chemical reactions. Forall the relative ease of working with fruit flies... Beadle sought asimpler organism and a simpler set of chemical reactions to study.
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Image Thomas Hunt Morgan began experimenting with Drosophilia, the fruit fly, in 1908. He bred a single white-eyed male fly with a red-eyed female. All the offspring produced by this union, both male and female, had red eyes. Morgan then bred these male and female siblings, which resulted in some offspring with red eyes and some with white eyes. All of the flies with white eyes were males. From these and other results, Morgan established a theory of heredity that was based on the idea that genes, arranged on the chromosomes, carry hereditary factors that are expressed in different combinations when coupled with the genes of a mate.
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In the early twentieth century, Thomas Hunt Morgan's network of Drosophila researchers transformed the science of genetics and made the Drosophila fruit fly into one of the most powerful genetic tools of the twentieth century. Historians of genetics have justifiably spilled gallons of ink describing Morgan's group and its efforts. Despite large numbers of women within Morgan's group... the model accepted by most historians is one of the Boss and the boys. This project seeks to recover the history of women within Drosophila genetics and analyze the gendered division of labor within Drosophila laboratories that rendered women invisible yet indispensable.
Thomas Hunt Morgan was born on September 25, 1866, in Lexington, Kentucky to Charlton and Ellen Morgan. He was descended on both sides from English Cavalier stock. He entered the State College of Kentucky in 1886, and later studied at John Hopkins University where he took up both physiology and morphology. In 1890, he received his doctorate for a paper on the embryology and phylogeny of sea spiders.
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