Hermann Joseph Muller (December 21, 1890 – April 5, 1967) was an American geneticist and educator.

He was born in New York City and attended Columbia University, earning his B.A. in 1910 and his Ph.D. in 1916, also having pursued graduate study at Cornell University in 1911-12. A student of Thomas Hunt Morgan, he taught at Rice Institute in Texas from 1915 until 1918, at Columbia from 1918 until 1920, and at The University of Texas from 1920 until 1932, when he moved to Germany, and later to Moscow (in 1934?), where he became senior geneticist of the Institute of Genetics in Moscow, where he remained until 1937. He then moved to Edinburgh.

When he came back to the United States, he worked as a untenured professor at Amherst College from 1940-1945. In 1945, he became professor of zoology at Indiana University.

His method for recognizing spontaneous gene mutation led to his discovery of a technique for artificially inducing mutations by means of X rays that has since had broad theoretical and practical application. For this discovery he was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 1955 he was one of 11 to sign the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.

Former graduate students

• H. Bentley Glass
• C.P. Oliver
• Wilson Stone
• Elof Axel Carlson
• Seymour Abrahamson

Former post-doctoral fellows

• George D. Snell

Worked in lab as undergraduates

• Carl Sagan

Biographies

• Elof Axel Carlson, Genes, radiation, and society: the life and work of H.J. Muller (Ithaca, New York : Cornell University Press, 1981). ISBN 0801413044
• Nobel Biography

Further reading

• Herman Joseph Muller, Modern Concept of Nature (SUNY Press, 1973). ISBN 0873950968
• Herman Joseph Muller, Man's Future Birthright (SUNY Press, 1973). ISBN 0873950976

See also

• Muller's ratchet

External links

• Muller, Hermann Joseph
• Hermann J. Muller – Biography

1890 births | 1967 deaths | American biologists | Jewish-American scientists | Geneticists | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winners | Indiana University faculty | University of Texas at Austin faculty | American humanists | Biophysicists

Hermann Joseph Muller | Hermann Joseph Muller | Hermann Joseph Muller | ハーマン・J・マラー | Hermann Joseph Muller | Hermann Joseph Muller