Hermann Joseph Muller (December 21, 1890 – April 5, 1967) was an American
geneticist
A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic process ...
who was awarded the 1946
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine () is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, acco ...
, "for the discovery that mutations can be induced by X-rays".
Muller warned of long-term dangers of
radioactive fallout
Nuclear fallout is residual radioactive material that is created by the reactions producing a nuclear explosion. It is initially present in the radioactive cloud created by the explosion, and "falls out" of the cloud as it is moved by the a ...
from
nuclear war
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a War, military conflict or prepared Policy, political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are Weapon of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conven ...
and
nuclear testing
Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the performance of nuclear weapons and the effects of Nuclear explosion, their explosion. Nuclear testing is a sensitive political issue. Governments have often performed tests to si ...
, which resulted in greater public scrutiny of these practices.
Early life
Muller was born in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, the son of Frances (Lyons) and Hermann Joseph Muller Sr., an artisan who worked with metals. Muller was a third-generation American whose father's ancestors were originally Catholic and came to the United States from
Koblenz
Koblenz ( , , ; Moselle Franconian language, Moselle Franconian: ''Kowelenz'') is a German city on the banks of the Rhine (Middle Rhine) and the Moselle, a multinational tributary.
Koblenz was established as a Roman Empire, Roman military p ...
.
His mother's family was of mixed
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
(descended from
Spanish and Portuguese Jews
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the fe ...
) and Anglican background, and had come from Britain.
Among his first cousins was
Alfred Kroeber
Alfred Louis Kroeber ( ; June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the fi ...
(Kroeber was
Ursula Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ( ; Kroeber; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the ''Earthsea'' fantas ...
's father) and first cousins once removed was
Herbert J. Muller.
As an adolescent, Muller attended a
Unitarian church and considered himself a
pantheist
Pantheism can refer to a number of philosophical and religious beliefs, such as the belief that the universe is God, or panentheism, the belief in a non-corporeal divine intelligence or God out of which the universe arisesAnn Thomson; Bodies ...
; in high school, he became an
atheist
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
. He excelled in the public schools. At 16, he entered
Columbia College. From his first semester, he was interested in biology; he became an early convert of the
Mendelian
Mendelian inheritance (also known as Mendelism) is a type of biological inheritance following the principles originally proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1865 and 1866, re-discovered in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns, and later popularized ...
-
chromosome
A chromosome is a package of DNA containing part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes, the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with nucleosome-forming packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells, the most import ...
theory of heredity—and the concept of genetic
mutation
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, ...
s and
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the Heredity, heritable traits characteristic of a population over generation ...
as the basis for
evolution
Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...
. He formed a biology club and also became a proponent of
eugenics
Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...
; the connections between biology and society would be his perennial concern. Muller earned a
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...
degree in 1910.
Muller remained at Columbia (the pre-eminent American zoology program at the time, due to
E. B. Wilson and his students) for graduate school. He became interested in the ''
Drosophila
''Drosophila'' (), from Ancient Greek δρόσος (''drósos''), meaning "dew", and φίλος (''phílos''), meaning "loving", is a genus of fly, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or p ...
'' genetics work of
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan (September 25, 1866 – December 4, 1945) was an Americans, American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, Embryology, embryologist, and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries e ...
's fly lab after undergraduate bottle washers
Alfred Sturtevant
Alfred Henry Sturtevant (November 21, 1891 – April 5, 1970) was an American geneticist. Sturtevant constructed the first genetic map of a chromosome in 1911. Throughout his career he worked on the organism ''Drosophila melanogaster'' with ...
and
Calvin Bridges
Calvin Blackman Bridges (January 11, 1889 – December 27, 1938) was an American scientist known for his contributions to the field of genetics. Along with Alfred Sturtevant and H.J. Muller, Bridges was part of Thomas Hunt Morgan's famous "Fly R ...
joined his biology club. In 1911–1912, he studied metabolism at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
, 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).
In the fly group, Muller's contributions were primarily theoretical—explanations for experimental results and ideas and predictions for new experiments. In the emerging collaborative culture of the drosophilists, however, credit was assigned based on results rather than ideas; Muller felt cheated when he was left out of major publications.
Career
In 1914,
Julian Huxley
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and Internationalism (politics), internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentiet ...
offered Muller a position at the recently founded William Marsh Rice Institute, now
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres.
Rice University comp ...
; he hurried to complete his
Doctor of philosophy
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...
degree and moved to Houston for the beginning of the 1915–1916 academic year (his degree was issued in 1916). At Rice, Muller taught biology and continued ''Drosophila'' lab work. In 1918, he proposed an explanation for the dramatic discontinuous alterations in ''
Oenothera lamarckiana
''Oenothera glazioviana'' is a species of flowering plant in the evening primrose family known by the common names large-flowered evening-primrose and redsepal evening primrose. ''Oenothera lamarckiana'' was formerly believed to be a different s ...
'' that were the basis of
Hugo de Vries
Hugo Marie de Vries (; 16 February 1848 – 21 May 1935) was a Dutch botanist and one of the first geneticists. He is known chiefly for suggesting the concept of genes, rediscovering the laws of heredity in the 1890s while apparently unaware of ...
's
theory of
mutationism
Mutationism is one of several alternatives to evolution by natural selection that have existed both before and after the publication of Charles Darwin's 1859 book ''On the Origin of Species''. In the theory, mutation was the source of novelty, cr ...
: "balanced lethals" allowed the accumulation of recessive mutations, and rare
crossing over events resulted in the sudden expression of these hidden traits. In other words, de Vries's experiments were explainable by the Mendelian-chromosome theory. Muller's work was increasingly focused on
mutation rate
In genetics, the mutation rate is the frequency of new mutations in a single gene, nucleotide sequence, or organism over time. Mutation rates are not constant and are not limited to a single type of mutation; there are many different types of mu ...
and
lethal mutations. In 1918, Morgan, short-handed because many of his students and assistants were drafted for the U.S. entry into
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, convinced Muller to return to Columbia to teach and to expand his experimental program.
At Columbia, Muller and his collaborator and longtime friend
Edgar Altenburg continued the investigation of lethal mutations. The primary method for detecting such mutations was to measure the sex ratios of the offspring of female flies. They predicted the ratio would vary from 1:1 due to recessive mutations on the X chromosome, which would be expressed only in males (which lacked the functional allele on a second X chromosome). Muller found a strong temperature dependence in mutation rate, leading him to believe that spontaneous mutation was the dominant mode (and to initially discount the role of external factors such as ionizing radiation or chemical agents). In 1920, Muller and Altenburg coauthored a seminal paper in ''
Genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinians, Augustinian ...
'' on "modifier genes" that determine the size of mutant ''Drosophila'' wings. In 1919, Muller made the important discovery of a mutant (later found to be a
chromosomal inversion
An inversion is a chromosome rearrangement in which a segment of a chromosome becomes inverted within its original position. An inversion occurs when a chromosome undergoes a two breaks within the chromosomal arm, and the segment between the two b ...
) that appeared to suppress crossing over, which opened up new avenues in mutation-rate studies. However, his appointment at Columbia was not continued; he accepted an offer from the
University of Texas
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 2 ...
and left Columbia after the summer of 1920.
Muller taught at the University of Texas from 1920 until 1932. Soon after returning to Texas, he married mathematics professor
Jessie Marie Jacobs, whom he had courted previously. In his early years at Texas, Muller's ''Drosophila'' work was slow going; the data from his mutation rate studies were difficult to interpret. In 1923, he began using
radium
Radium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in alkaline earth metal, group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, ...
and
X-rays
An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...
,
but the relationship between radiation and mutation was difficult to measure because such radiation also sterilized the flies. In this period, he also became involved with eugenics and human genetics. He carried out a study of twins separated at birth that seemed to indicate a strong hereditary component of
I.Q. Muller was critical of the new directions of the eugenics movement (such as anti-immigration), but was hopeful about the prospects for positive eugenics.
In 1932, at the
Third International Eugenics Congress, Muller gave a speech and stated, "eugenics might yet perfect the human race, but only in a society consciously organized for the common good".
Discovery of X-ray mutagenesis
In 1926, a series of major breakthroughs began. In November, Muller carried out two experiments with varied doses of X-rays, the second of which used the crossing over suppressor stock ("ClB") he had found in 1919. A clear, quantitative connection between radiation and lethal mutations quickly emerged. Muller's discovery created a media sensation after he delivered a paper entitled "The Problem of Genetic Modification" at the Fifth International Congress of Genetics in
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
; it would make him one of the better-known public intellectuals of the early 20th century. By 1928, others had replicated his dramatic results, expanding them to other
model organism
A model organism is a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. Mo ...
s, such as
wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder ...
s and
maize
Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...
. In the following years, he began publicizing the likely dangers of radiation exposure in humans (such as physicians who frequently operate X-ray equipment or shoe sellers who radiated their customers' feet).
His lab grew quickly, but it shrank again following the onset of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
. Especially after the stock market crash, Muller was increasingly pessimistic about the prospects of
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...
. Some of his visiting lab members were from the
USSR
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, and he helped edit and distribute an illegal leftist student newspaper, ''The Spark''. It was a difficult period for Muller both scientifically and personally; his marriage was falling apart, and he was increasingly dissatisfied with his life in Texas. Meanwhile, the waning of the eugenics movement, ironically hastened by his own work pointing to the previously ignored connections between environment and genetics, meant that his ideas on the future of human evolution had reduced impact in the public sphere. Muller's speech before the
Third International Eugenics Conference in New York has been credited with marking the end of
Galtonism, and perhaps even
eugenics
Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...
itself, as a popular movement in the sciences.
H. Bentley Glass, a contemporary observer and Ph.D. student of Muller's, would say Muller's speech "just about finished the activity of the Eugenics Society". Muller told the assembled that eugenic ideals could no longer be achieved, because the capitalistic system produces the wrong motives of individual action, and he disdained the natures of the dominant class, and the type of society they were creating.
Work in Europe
In September 1932, Muller moved to Berlin to work with the Russian expatriate geneticist
Nikolay Timofeeff-Ressovsky; a trip intended as a limited sabbatical stretched into an eight-year, five-country journey. In Berlin, he met two physicists who would later be significant to the biology community:
Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr (, ; ; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and old quantum theory, quantum theory, for which he received the No ...
and
Max Delbrück
Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück (; September 4, 1906 – March 9, 1981) was a German–American biophysicist who participated in launching the molecular biology research program in the late 1930s. He stimulated physical science, physical scientist ...
. The
Nazi
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
movement was precipitating the rapid emigration of scientific talent from Germany, and Muller was particularly opposed to the politics of National Socialism. The FBI was investigating Muller because of his involvement with ''The Spark'', so he chose instead to go to the Soviet Union (an environment better suited to his political beliefs). In 1933, Muller and his wife reconciled, and their son
David E. Muller
David Eugene Muller (November 2, 1924 – April 27, 2008) was an American mathematician and computer scientist. He was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Illinois (1953–92), after which he became an emeritus ...
and she moved with Hermann to
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
. There, at the Institute of Genetics, he imported the basic equipment for a ''Drosophila'' lab—including the flies—and set up shop. The institute was moved to
Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
in 1934, and Muller and his wife were divorced in 1935.
In the USSR, Muller supervised a large and productive lab, and organized work on medical genetics. Most of his work involved further explorations of genetics and radiation. There he completed his eugenics book, ''Out of the Night'', the main ideas of which dated to 1910. By 1936, however,
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
's repressive policies and the rise of
Lysenkoism
Lysenkoism ( ; ) was a political campaign led by the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century, rejecting natural selection in favour of a form of Lamarckism, as well as expanding upon ...
was making the USSR an increasingly problematic place to live and work. Muller and many of the Russian genetics community did what they could to oppose
Trofim Lysenko
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (; , ; 20 November 1976) was a Soviet agronomist and scientist.''An ill-educated agronomist with huge ambitions, Lysenko failed to become a real scientist, but greatly succeeded in exposing of the “bourgeois enemies o ...
and his
Larmarckian evolutionary theory, but Muller was soon forced to leave the Soviet Union after Stalin read a translation of his eugenics book and was "displeased by it, and...ordered an attack prepared against it." By this time, Muller had already asked for a leave of absence. News of the
Lysenko trials had reached the United States, and his son David was being raised there, after his divorce.
[Carlson, ''Genes, Radiation, and Society'', p. 335] In the official declaration by the Institute, biological determinism was rejected: "The development of society is subject not to biological laws but to higher social laws. Attempts to spread to humanity the laws of the animal kingdom are an attempt to lower the human being to the level of beasts."
Muller, with about 250 strains of ''Drosophila'', moved to
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...
in September 1937, after brief stays in
Madrid
Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
and
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
. In 1938, with war on the horizon, he began looking for a permanent position back in the United States. He also began courting Dorothea "Thea" Kantorowicz, a German refugee; they were married in May 1939. The Seventh International Congress on Genetics was held in Edinburgh later that year; Muller wrote a "Geneticists' Manifesto" in response to the question: "How could the world's population be improved most effectively genetically?" He also engaged in a debate with the perennial genetics gadfly
Richard Goldschmidt
Richard Benedict Goldschmidt (April 12, 1878 – April 24, 1958) was a German geneticist. He is considered the first to attempt to integrate genetics, development, and evolution. He pioneered understanding of reaction norms, genetic assimilatio ...
over the existence of the gene, for which little direct physical evidence existed at the time.
Later career
When Muller returned to the United States in 1940, he took an untenured research position at
Amherst College
Amherst College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zepha ...
, in the department of
Otto C. Glaser. After the U.S. entry into
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, his position was extended indefinitely and expanded to include teaching. His ''Drosophila'' work in this period focused on measuring the rate of spontaneous (as opposed to radiation-induced) mutations. Muller's publication rate decreased greatly in this period, from a combination of lack of lab workers and experimentally challenging projects. However, he also worked as an adviser in the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada.
From 1942 to 1946, the ...
(though he did not know that was what it was), as well as a study of the mutational effects of
radar
Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...
. Muller's appointment was ended after the 1944–1945 academic year, and despite difficulties stemming from his socialist political activities, he found a position as professor of zoology at
Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...
. Here, he lived in a
Dutch Colonial Revival
Dutch Colonial is a style of domestic architecture, primarily characterized by gambrel roofs having curved eaves along the length of the house. Modern versions built in the early 20th century are more accurately referred to as "Dutch Colonial Re ...
house in
Bloomington's
Vinegar Hill
Vinegar () is an aqueous solution of diluted acetic acid and trace compounds that may include flavorings. Vinegar typically contains from 5% to 18% acetic acid by volume. Usually, the acetic acid is produced by a double fermentation, converting ...
neighborhood.
In 1946, Muller was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine () is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, acco ...
, "for the discovery that mutations can be induced by X-rays". Genetics, and especially the physical and physiological nature of the gene, was becoming a central topic in biology, and X-ray mutagenesis was a key to many recent advances, among them
George Beadle
George Wells Beadle (October 22, 1903 – June 9, 1989) was an American geneticist. In 1958 he shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum for their discovery of the role of genes in regulating biochemical eve ...
and
Edward Tatum
Edward Lawrie Tatum (December 14, 1909 – November 5, 1975) was an American geneticist. He shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958 with George Beadle for showing that genes control individual steps in metabolism. The o ...
's work on ''
Neurospora
''Neurospora'' is a genus of Ascomycete fungi. The genus name, meaning "nerve spore" refers to the characteristic striations on the spores that resemble axons.
The best known species in this genus is '' Neurospora crassa'', a common model organ ...
'' that established in 1941 the
one gene-one enzyme hypothesis
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...
.
[Carlson, ''Genes, Radiation, and Society'', pp. 304–318] In Muller's Nobel Prize lecture, he argued that no threshold dose of radiation existed that did not produce
mutagenesis
Mutagenesis () is a process by which the genetic information of an organism is changed by the production of a mutation. It may occur spontaneously in nature, or as a result of exposure to mutagens. It can also be achieved experimentally using lab ...
, which led to the adoption of the
linear no-threshold model
The linear no-threshold model (LNT) is a dose-response model used in radiation protection to estimate stochastic health effects such as radiation-induced cancer, genetic mutations and teratogenic effects on the human body due to exposure to io ...
of radiation on cancer risks.
The Nobel Prize, in the wake of the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, during World War II. The aerial bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civili ...
, focused public attention on a subject Muller had been publicizing for two decades - the dangers of radiation. In 1952,
nuclear fallout
Nuclear fallout is residual radioactive material that is created by the reactions producing a nuclear explosion. It is initially present in the mushroom cloud, radioactive cloud created by the explosion, and "falls out" of the cloud as it is ...
became a public issue; since
Operation Crossroads
Operation Crossroads was a pair of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. They were the first nuclear weapon tests since Trinity on July 16, 1945, and the first detonations of nuclear devices sinc ...
, more and more evidence had been leaking out about
radiation sickness
Acute radiation syndrome (ARS), also known as radiation sickness or radiation poisoning, is a collection of health effects that are caused by being exposed to high amounts of ionizing radiation in a short period of time. Symptoms can start wit ...
and death caused by
nuclear testing
Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the performance of nuclear weapons and the effects of Nuclear explosion, their explosion. Nuclear testing is a sensitive political issue. Governments have often performed tests to si ...
. Muller and many other scientists pursued an array of political activities to defuse the threat of
nuclear war
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a War, military conflict or prepared Policy, political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are Weapon of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conven ...
. With the
Castle Bravo
Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of ''Operation Castle''. Detonated on 1 March 1954, the device remains the most powe ...
fallout controversy in 1954, the issue became even more urgent. In 1955, Muller was one of 11 prominent intellectuals to sign the
Russell–Einstein Manifesto
The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on 9 July 1955 by Bertrand Russell in the midst of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international ...
, the upshot of which was the first
1957 Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, which addressed the control of nuclear weapons.
[John Bellamy Foster (2009). ''The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet'', Monthly Review Press, New York, pp. 71–72.] He was a signatory (with many other scientists) of the 1958 petition to the United Nations, calling for an end to nuclear weapons testing, which was initiated by the Nobel Prize-winning chemist
Linus Pauling
Linus Carl Pauling ( ; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist and peace activist. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. ''New Scientist'' called him one of the 20 gre ...
.
Muller's opinions on the effect of radiation on mutagenesis were used by
Rachel Carson
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservation movement, conservationist whose sea trilogy (1941–1955) and book ''Silent Spring'' (1962) are credited with advancing mari ...
in her book ''
Silent Spring
''Silent Spring'' is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. Published on September 27, 1962, the book documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of DDT, a pesticide used by soldiers during World War II. Carson acc ...
'', however, his opinions have been criticized by some scientists; geneticist
James F. Crow
James Franklin Crow (January 18, 1916 – January 4, 2012) was Professor Emeritus of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a prominent population geneticist whose career spanned from the modern synthesis to the genomic era.
Some o ...
called Muller's view "alarmist" and wrote that it created in the public "an irrational fear of low-level radiation relative to other risks".
It has been argued that Muller's opinion was not supported by studies on the
survivors of the atomic bombings, or by research on mice, and that he ignored another study that contradicted the
linear no-threshold model
The linear no-threshold model (LNT) is a dose-response model used in radiation protection to estimate stochastic health effects such as radiation-induced cancer, genetic mutations and teratogenic effects on the human body due to exposure to io ...
he supported, thereby affecting the formulation of policy that favored this model.
He was also accused of suppressing opposing views and of being part of a US National Academy of Sciences Committee that misrepresented the research record to secure continued funding and strengthen his influence on US health policy.
Muller was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
in 1942 and the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
in 1947 Muller was awarded the
Linnean Society of London
The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript a ...
's
Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1958 and the Kimber Genetics Award of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, of which he was a member, in 1955. He served as president of the American Humanist Association from 1956 to 1958. The
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
selected him as its Gibbs Lecturer for 1958. He retired in 1964. The ''Drosophila'' basic units of inheritance, their
chromosomal arms, are named "
Muller elements" in Muller's honor. he died in 1967.
H. J. Muller and science fiction writer
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ( ; Kroeber; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the ''Earthsea'' fantas ...
were
first cousins once removed
A cousin is a relative who is the child of a parent's sibling; this is more specifically referred to as a first cousin. A parent of a first cousin is an aunt or uncle.
More generally, in the kinship system used in the English-speaking world, c ...
; his father (Hermann J. Muller Sr.) and her father's mother (Johanna Muller Kroeber) were siblings, the children of Nicholas Müller, who immigrated to the United States in 1848, and at that time dropped the umlaut from his name. Another cousin was
Herbert J. Muller, whose grandfather Otto was another son of Nicholas and a sibling of Hermann Sr. and Johanna.
Legacy
In a recent retrospective article about Muller's contribution,
James Haber
James E. Haber is an American molecular biologist known for discoveries in the field of DNA repair, in particular for his contributions to understanding the mechanisms of non-homologous end joining and microhomology-mediated end joining, as well ...
wrote as follows:
Drosophila geneticist, Hermann Muller, envisioned the fundamental principles that such a molecule must have: to be auto-assembling and to be mutable but then again stable. He followed his prescient review of these properties with a remarkable prediction: learning about the hereditary material and its properties would not come from studying Drosophila, but from studying bacteria and their bacteriophages.
Global policy
He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a
world constitution. As a result, for the first time in human history, a
World Constituent Assembly
The World Constitutional Convention (WCC), also known as the World Constituent Assembly (WCA) or the First World Constituent Assembly, took place in Interlaken, Switzerland and Wolfach, Germany, 1968. The convention aimed to foster global coopera ...
convened to draft and adopt a
Constitution for the Federation of Earth.
Personal life
Muller had a daughter, Helen J. Muller, now a professor emerita at the
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; ) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1889 by the New Mexico Territorial Legislature, it is the state's second oldest university, a flagship university in th ...
, who has a daughter,
Mala Htun
Mala Nani Htun (August 23, 1969 – January 24, 2025) was an American political scientist. She was a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico. Htun studied comparative politics, particularly women's rights and the politi ...
, also a professor at the University of New Mexico. His son,
David E. Muller
David Eugene Muller (November 2, 1924 – April 27, 2008) was an American mathematician and computer scientist. He was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Illinois (1953–92), after which he became an emeritus ...
, professor emeritus of mathematics and computer science at the
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...
and at
New Mexico State University
New Mexico State University (NMSU or NM State) is a public, land-grant, research university in Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1888, it is the state's oldest public institution of higher education, and was the original land-g ...
, died in 2008 in
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Las Cruces (; ; lit. 'the crosses') is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico and the county seat, seat of Doña Ana County, New Mexico, Doña Ana County. As of the 2020 United States ce ...
. David's mother was Jessie Jacobs Muller Offermann (1890–1954), Hermann's first wife. Helen's mother was Dorothea Kantorowicz Muller (1909–1986), Hermann's second wife, who came to the U.S. in 1940 as a German Jewish refugee.
He had a brief affair with
Milly Bennett.
Notable former students
*
Raissa L. Berg
Raissa L'vovna Berg (; 1913–2006) was a Russian geneticist and evolutionary biologist.
Early life
Raissa Berg was born in St. Petersburg, the second child of Lev Berg, Lev Semyonovitch Berg and Polina Abramovna Kotlovker, both natives of Bender ...
*
Elof Axel Carlson
*
H. Bentley Glass
*
C. P. Oliver
*
Wilson Stone
;Former postdoctoral fellows
*
George D. Snell
George Davis Snell NAS (December 19, 1903 – June 6, 1996) was an American mouse geneticist and basic transplant immunologist.
Work
George Snell shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Baruj Benacerraf and Jean Dausset fo ...
;Worked in lab as undergraduates
*
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including e ...
Bibliography
*Herman Joseph Muller, '' Modern Concept of Nature'' (SUNY Press, 1973). .
*Herman Joseph Muller, ''Man's Future Birthright'' (SUNY Press, 1973). .
* H. J. Muller, ''Out of the Night: A Biologist's View of the Future'' (Vanguard Press, 1935).
* H. J. Muller, ''Studies in Genetics: The Selected Papers of H. J. Muller'' (Indiana University Press, 1962).
See also
*
Mutagenesis
Mutagenesis () is a process by which the genetic information of an organism is changed by the production of a mutation. It may occur spontaneously in nature, or as a result of exposure to mutagens. It can also be achieved experimentally using lab ...
*
Bateson–Dobzhansky–Muller model
*
Repository for Germinal Choice
The Repository for Germinal Choice (originally named the Hermann J. Muller Repository for Germinal Choice, after Nobel laureate Hermann Joseph Muller) was a sperm bank that operated in Escondido, California from 1980 to 1999. The repository is c ...
*
Muller's ratchet
In evolutionary genetics, Muller's ratchet (named after Hermann Joseph Muller, by analogy with a ratchet effect) is a process which, in the absence of recombination (especially in an asexual population), results in an accumulation of irreversibl ...
*
Muller's morphs
Hermann J. Muller (1890–1967), who was a 1946 Nobel Prize winner, coined the terms amorph, hypomorph, hypermorph, antimorph and neomorph to classify mutations based on their behaviour in various genetic situations, as well as gene interac ...
*
History of biology
The history of biology traces the study of the life, living world from ancient to Modernity, modern times. Although the concept of ''biology'' as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from history o ...
*
History of genetics
The history of genetics dates from the classical era with contributions by Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, and others. Modern genetics began with the work of the Augustinian friar Gregor Johann Mendel. Experiments on Plant Hybridis ...
*
History of model organisms
Model organisms are specific organisms studied to gain knowledge of other organisms, to generalize both within and between species. Model organisms offer standards for comparison of other organisms.Rader, ''Making Mice'', p. 16 Model organism st ...
*
List of Jewish Nobel laureates
Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023, at least 216 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. Jews constitut ...
References
External links
* including the Nobel Lecture on December 12, 1946 ''The Production of Mutations''
*
The Muller manuscripts, 1910–1967in archives of the Indiana University
On the origins of the linear no-threshold (LNT) dogma by means of untruths, artful dodges and blind faith Edward J. Calabrese, Environmental Research 142 (2015) 432–442.
Hermann J. Muller CollectionCold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Muller, Hermann Joseph
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1967 deaths
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