Thomas Hunt Morgan Biography PDF

# Thomas Hunt Morgan **US geneticist and zoologist** Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on heredity, building upon the work of Gregor Mendel. He confirmed the role of chromosomes and laid the foundations for modern genetics. ## Milestones * **Early Experiments:**...

# Thomas Hunt Morgan **US geneticist and zoologist** Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on heredity, building upon the work of Gregor Mendel. He confirmed the role of chromosomes and laid the foundations for modern genetics. ## Milestones * **Early Experiments:** * Accepted teaching position at Bryn Mawr in 1891, focusing on experimental embryology and differentiation. * **The Fly Room:** * Moved to Columbia University in 1904. * Began fruit fly breeding program in 1908. * **Seminal Text:** * Published a landmark text describing heredity according to Mendel's laws in 1915. * **Marine Research:** * Became head of biology at Caltech in 1928, establishing a marine biology research unit. * **Prize Winner:** * Received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for his work on inherited characteristics. ## Early Life and Education Morgan was born into a wealthy family in Kentucky. He developed a lifelong fascination with the natural world, collecting fossils as a boy and conducting biological fieldwork during his adolescence. At 16, he began his education at the University of Kentucky. Afterwards, he attended Johns Hopkins University for postgraduate work in morphology and physiology. By age 24, he received his PhD in zoology. ## Career In 1891, Morgan became an associate professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College and in 1904 he became a professor in experimental Zoology at Columbia University. His work at Bryn Mawr involved teaching and research in embryology. The move to Columbia, marked the beginning of his groundbreaking research in heredity. He worked on the now known field of genetics where prior research had only been partial or inconclusive. ## Contributions * **Confirmation of Mendel's Laws:** He confirmed and validated Gregor Mendel's theorized "particles of inheritance". * **The Fly Room:** His pioneering research using fruit flies in his laboratory. Fruit flies were ideal for the study of inheritance due to the fast generation cycle. Millions of fruit flies were housed in his laboratory and they reproduced prolifically in approximately 10 days. * **Significance of Chromosomes:** He recognized the crucial role of chromosomes in the inheritance of characteristics.