After the rediscovery of Mendelian inheritance in 1900, Morgan switched his research to the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In 1904, E.B. Wilson invited Morgan to join him at Columbia University. This move freed Morgan to focus fully on experimental work.[1]
In his famous Fly Room at Columbia, Morgan was able to show that genes are carried on chromosomes and are the mechanical basis of heredity. These discoveries formed the basis of the modern science of genetics.
He was given the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933. It was the first one given for genetics, for his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity.[2] The prize was not shared with the lab's main researcher, Alfred Sturtevant, a decision of the Nobel Committee which was certainly controversial.[3]
Morgan's early work with Drosophila was on the associations known as 'coupling' and 'repulsion', discovered by English workers in 1909 and 1910 using the Sweet Pea. These were, in reality, the same phenomenon, which was later called linkage. Morgan's first papers dealt with the demonstration of sex linkage of the gene for white eyes in the fly, the male fly being heterogametic (XY).
During his distinguished career, Morgan wrote 22 books and 370 scientific papers,[4] and, as a result of his work, Drosophila became the main 'model organism' in genetics. The Division of Biology he started at the California Institute of Technology produced sevenNobel Prize winners.
References
↑Allen, Garland E. 1978. Thomas Hunt Morgan: the man and his science. Princeton University Press, pp 68-70. ISBN0-691-08200-6
↑Kohler, Robert E. 1994. Lords of the fly: Drosophila genetics and the experimental life. Chicago.
↑Fisher, Ronald A. and G.R. de Beer (1947). "Bibliography of Thomas Hunt Morgan". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 5 (15): 455–466. JSTOR769094.
