MORGAN, THOMAS HUNT. - American biologist, born at Lexington on 25 September 1866, died at Pasadena on 4 December 1945. He graduated in natural sciences in 1890 from Johns Hopkins University. He was professor of biology at Bryn-Mawr College (1894), then of zoology at Columbia University (1904), and finally at the Pasadena Institutes (1928). He received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1933.
M.’s work ranged over the most diverse branches of the biological sciences. He began his studies as an experimental embryologist (polarity of the eggs of amphibians and echinoderms, developmental capacities of blastomeres, merogony, etc.); he then studied experimental regeneration in various animal groups (protozoa, coelenterates, planarians, and annelids), on which he formulated the theory of organic polarity (1902). His most important research resulted from the study of the vinegar gnat (Drosophila), through which he brought to light the close connection between heredity and chromosomes, thereby founding modern genetics. He had numerous distinguished pupils and collaborators (Bridge, Sturtevant, Müller, Stern, etc.). He published an enormous number of papers and works, among which the following should be mentioned: The regeneration (Nuova York 1901); Heredity and sex (ivi 1913); The physical basis of heredity (Philadelphia 1919); Evolution and genetics (Princeton 1925); The theory of the gene (Nuova Haven 1926); Experimental embryology (Nuova York 1927); The scientific basis of evolution (ivi 1932); Embryology and genetics (ivi 1934).
Giorgio M. Baffoni