MULLER, HERMANN JOSEPH

(b. New York, N.Y., 21 December 1890; d. Indianapolis, Indiana, 5 April 1967).

genetics, evolution, eugenics.

Muller’s grandfather came to the United States from Germany following the revolution of 1848. His father, for whom he was named, was to train in the law, but instead had to take over the family business of manufacturing bronze artworks. He died when Muller was nine years old, leaving his widow, Frances Lyons, a modest income. Even as a child, Muller was interested in evolution and the sciences; as a student at Morris High School, he founded a science club. Upon graduation, Muller entered Columbia College, where in his sophomore year he decided to make genetics his major study, after reading R. H. Lock’s Heredity, Variation, and Evolution.

At Columbia, Muller attended Edmund B. Wilson’s course, which, through its emphasis on the chromosome theory of heredity, shaped his genetic view of biological problems. He received the B.A. in 1910, then enrolled in Cornell Medical School and the Columbia University department of physiology. His master’s thesis (1912) concerned the transmission of nerve impulses. His interest in genetics was unabated, however, and he remained in daily contact with two of his classmates, Alfred H. Sturtevant and Calvin B. Bridges, who were working at Columbia with Thomas Hunt Morgan. In 1912 Muller himself was accepted by Morgan as a graduate student; he rapidly established a reputation for imaginative theorizing and ingenious experimental design. His dissertation, on crossing-over, contributed the new concepts of coincidence and interference in the resolution of genetic maps and established the law of linear linkage. After taking the Ph.D. in 1916, Muller accepted an invitation from Julian Huxley to teach at Rice Institute. His own research at this time comprised studies of the complex relationship of gene and character in which he isolated and mapped the modifier genes that control the quantitative expression of inherited characteristics. From these investigations Muller was led to recognize the significance of the individual gene.

Muller analyzed mutations to conclude that the concept should be confined to variations arising in the individual gene. Upon his return to Columbia (1918–1920), he produced his most important theoretical work. Since genes, unlike all other cellular components, can reproduce the alterations arising in them (indeed, this property of self-replication is their unique feature), Muller argued that all other cellular components must be ultimately produced by genes; he theorized that life must have begun with the appearance of self-replicating molecules, or “naked genes,” which he thought similar to viruses.

From 1921 until 1932 Muller worked at the University of Texas, where he became full professor. During this period he studied mutation frequency and designed complex genetic stocks to detect the most commonly occurring lethal mutations (which kill unless protected by a normal allele). In 1926 Muller induced mutations by exposing Drosophila to X rays. He reported his findings in an article entitled “Artificial Transmutation of the Gene,” which was published in Science in 1927. This work won Muller an international reputation, stimulated a number of other workers to take up the subject, and became the basis for the study of radiation genetics.

In 1932 Muller went to Berlin, where he spent a year as a Guggenheim fellow working in Oskar Vogt’s Brain Research Institute. He did research with N. W. Timofeev-Ressovsky on mutation, evaluating and criticizing physical models (among them the “target theory”), and exploring the structure of the gene. As Hitler achieved increasing power, Muller, a staunch supporter of socialist causes, decided to leave Germany. He accepted an invitation from N. I. Vavilov to do research in the Soviet Union, which he regarded as an experimental society that would support genetics and eugenics.

Muller worked in Leningrad and Moscow at the Academy of Sciences from 1933 until 1937. He was chiefly concerned with radiation genetics, cytogenetics, and gene structure. By 1935 he was embroiled in the growing controversy about the work of Lysenko, which he could not support. Muller himself hoped to win Soviet sponsorship for basic genetics and for the program of positive eugenics that he presented in his book Out of the Night (New York, 1935). Lysenko won Stalin’s backing, and Muller left the Soviet Union, after volunteering to serve in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1938 Muller received an appointment to the University of Edinburgh, where he analyzed the chromosomal basis of embryonic death from radiation damage. With the outbreak of World War II, he returned to the United States. He thought that it would be difficult to continue scientific research in Great Britain and since he and his second wife, Dorothea Kantorowicz, were part Jewish, he was also concerned with their own safety. He first went to Amherst College, where he continued his genetic studies, and then, in 1945, he secured a permanent post at Indiana University, where he remained until his death.

In 1946 Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. He took advantage of the concomitant fame to publicize his campaign against the medical, industrial, and military abuse of radiation.

He also publicly criticized the doctrines of Lysenko and resigned from the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1947. In his later years Muller also worked for the reform of the teaching of biology in secondary schools (he advocated a strong genetic and evolutionary viewpoint) and set out a positive eugenic program, based on what he called “germinal choice,” whereby the semen of unusually healthy and gifted men would be frozen for use by later generations. Although his social views were the subject of considerable public controversy, they were prompted by his genuine scientific concern about the accumulating load of human spontaneous mutations produced by the relaxation of natural selection through modern culture and technology.

Muller was a member of a number of scientific societies, including the National Academy of Sciences. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and served as president of several genetic societies and congresses.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Muller published 372 works, of which a complete bibliography is given by Pontecorvo (below). His published and manuscript articles, correspondence, notebooks, and other scholarly documents are in the Lilly Library of Indiana University in Bloomington. His most famous publication is “Artificial Transmutation of the Gene,” in Science, 66 (1927), 84–87.

II. Secondary Literature. On Muller and his work see E. A. Carlson, “The Legacy of Hermann Joseph Muller: 1890–1967,” in Canadian Journal of Genetics and Cytology, 9 , no. 3 (1967), 437–448; “H. J. Muller,” in Genetics, 70 (1972), 1–30; G. Pontecorvo, “Hermann Joseph Muller 1890–1967,” in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 14 (1968), 349–389, with complete bibliography; and T. M. Sonneborn, “H. J. Muller, Crusader for Human Betterment,” in Science, 162 (1968), 772–776.

Elof Axel Carlson