The greatest insights in biology of the 19th-20th centuries are rightfully considered to be the work of Charles Darwin on evolution, Gregor Mendel on heredity and variability, and Thomas Hunt Morgan on genes and chromosomes. It was Morgan's work that opened up an experimental path of development for genetics. Gregor Mendel and Thomas Hunt Morgan are biologists who became the luminaries and founders of genetics, and all modern molecular biologists should be grateful to them. Their intuitively selected research objects opened the door to the world of genome decoding, genetic engineering and transgenic selection.
At the right time and in the right place
The biography of Thomas Hunt Morgan does not contain the tragic rejection of his colleagues, persecution for his ideas, loneliness, undeserved oblivion and invalidity in life. He lived for a long time surrounded by close people, built a successful career as a researcher and teacher, became one of the luminaries and icons of fundamental genetics - science, whose representatives today receive more Nobel Prizes than scientists in any other field.
The work of Thomas Hunt Morgan and his co-authors at the beginning of the 20th century absorbed all the accumulated genetic data, the results of the study of cell division (mitosis and meiosis), conclusions about the role of the cell nucleus and chromosomes in the inheritance of characters. His chromosome theory explained the nature of hereditary human pathologies, allowed experimentally changing hereditary information, and became the beginning of modern methods of genetic research. Not being a pioneer, Thomas Hunt Morgan formulated the postulates of a theory that changed the world. After his work, the writers' fantasies about prolonging life, transforming a person, and creating new organs became just a matter of time.
Aristocratic origin
On a fall day, September 15, 1866, in the city of Lexington, Kentucky, the nephew of the legendary Confederate Army General Francis Gent Morgan was born and the great-grandson of the first millionaire of the southwestern United States. His father Charleston Hunt Morgan is a successful diplomat, consul of America in Sicily. Mother - Ellen - the granddaughter of the author of the American national anthem Francis Scott Key. Thomas was interested in biology and geology since childhood. From the age of ten, he collected all his free time in the vicinity of stones, feathers and bird eggs in the mountains of Kentucky. As he got older, he helped the USGS research teams all summer in the mountains that were already native to him. After leaving school, the boy entered Kentucky College, in 1886 received a bachelor's degree.
Student years
After leaving school, Thomas Morgan entered the only university at that time - the John Hopkins University in Baltimore (Maryland). There he became interested in the morphology and physiology of animals. His first scientific work was about the structure and physiology of sea spiders. He then went into embryology at the Woods Hall laboratory, visiting Jamaica and the Bahamas. He receives a master's degree, defends his thesis, and in 1891 he heads the Department of Biology at Brin-Mayrovsky College. Since 1894, Thomas Hunt Morgan has been practicing at the Zoological Laboratory of Naples. From studying embryology, a scientist proceeds to studying the inheritance of traits. At that time, scientific circles were debating the preformists (supporters of the presence in the gametes of structures that predetermine the formation of the organism) and epigenists (supporters of development under the influence of external factors). Atheist Thomas Hunt Morgan has a middle position on this issue. Returning from Naples in 1895, he receives the title of professor. Studying the ability of regeneration, he writes two books - The Development of the Frog's Egg (1897) and Regeneration (1900), but continues to deal with heredity and evolution. In 1904, Thomas married his student Lilian Vaughan Sampson. She not only bore him a son and three daughters, but also became his associate and assistant in work.
Columbia University
Since 1903, Morgan has been professor at the Department of Experimental Zoology at the University. It is here that he will work for 24 years and make his famous discoveries. Evolution and inheritance were the main topics of the scientific environment of that time. Scientists are seeking confirmation of the theory of natural selection and the “rediscovered” Hugo de Vries Mendel’s inheritance laws. Forty-four-year-old Thomas Hunt Morgan decides to experimentally verify the correctness of George Mendel and for many years becomes the "master of flies" - Drosophila flies. The successful choice of an object for experiments made these insects a “sacred cow” of all geneticists for many centuries.
A successful object and associates are the key to success
Drosophila melanogaster - a small red-eyed fruit fly - turned out to be an ideal object of experimentation. It is easy to maintain - in a one and a half liter milk bottle, there are up to a thousand individuals. It multiplies already in the second week of life, it has a pronounced sexual dimorphism (external differences between males and females). And most importantly, these flies have only four chromosomes, and they can be studied throughout their three-month life. Over the course of a year, an observer can track changes and inheritance of traits in more than thirty generations. Morgan's experiments were helped by his most talented students, who became associates and co-authors - Calvin Bridges, Alfred Stertevan, Hermann Joseph Meller. Exactly so, from the milk bottles stolen from the inhabitants of Manhattan, the legendary “mushroom room” was equipped - laboratory No. 613 in the Shemeron building of Columbia University.
Innovative teacher
Morganov’s “mushroom room” not only became famous throughout the world and became a place of pilgrimage for scientists. This room with an area of 24 m2 changed the very organization of the educational process. The scientist built the work on the principles of democracy, free exchange of opinions, lack of subordination, full transparency for all participants and collective brainstorming when discussing the results and planning experiments. It was this teaching methodology that became prevalent in all universities in America, and later spread to Europe.
Drosophila with pink eyes
Morgan and his students began experiments, setting themselves the task of clarifying the principles of inheritance of mutations. The long two years of rearing flies did not produce any visible progress. But a miracle happened - individuals with pink eyes, vestiges of wings, a yellow body appeared, and it was they who gave the material for the emergence of the theory of inheritance. Numerous crosses and counting of thousands of descendants, shelves with thousands of bottles and millions of Drosophila - this is the price of success. Convincing evidence of sex-linked inheritance and storage of information about a trait in a particular chromosome region (locus) appeared in the scientist's article “Sex-linked Inheritance in Drosophila”, 1910).
Chromosome theory
The result of all experiments, a contribution to the biology of Thomas Hunt Morgan, was his theory of inheritance. Its main postulate is that the material basis of heredity is chromosomes, in which genes are linearly arranged. The discoveries of Thomas Hunt Morgan of linked genes inherited together and traits that are inherited by sex shocked the world (“Mechanisms of Mendeleev’s Heredity”, 1915). And this happened only a few years after the concept of “gene” was introduced into biology as a structural unit of heredity (V. Johannsen, 1909).
Professional recognition
Although the train of universal fame did not reach for the scientist, one academy after another makes it a member. In 1923, he became a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Member of the Royal Society of London, the American Philosophical Society and many other internationally recognized organizations. In 1933, for the discoveries related to the role of chromosomes in heredity, the biologist was awarded the Nobel Prize, which he himself shared with Bridges and Startan. In his arsenal is the Darwin Medal (1924) and the Copley Medal (1939). His name is given to the Kentucky Department of Biology and the annual Society of Genetics Award of America. A unit of gene linkage is called an organide.
After fame
From 1928 until his death, Professor Thomas Morgan headed the Kirchhoff Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, USA). Then he became the organizer of the Department of Biology, which raised seven Nobel Prize winners in genetics and evolution. He continued to deal with the laws of inheritance in pigeons and rare mice, the regeneration and development of secondary sexual characteristics in salamanders. He even bought and equipped a laboratory in the California town of Corona del Mar. He died suddenly in Pasadena on December 4, 1945 from the opening of gastric bleeding.
Summarizing
In short, the contribution of Thomas Hunt Morgan to biology is comparable to such breakthroughs in human thought as the discovery of a nuclear nucleus in physics, human exploration of outer space, and the development of cybernetics and computer technology. A friendly man with a subtle sense of humor, self-confident, but simple and unpretentious in everyday life - this was remembered by his relatives and associates. The discoverer, who did not seek to become a hero of myths, but, on the contrary, wanted to rid the world of myths and prejudices. Which promised not sensation, but a scientific understanding of the subject. At a time when poets were more than poets, and great scientists were more than great scientists, Thomas Hunt Morgan managed to remain just a biologist.