The greatest insights in biology XIX-XXFor centuries, Charles Darwin's works on evolution, Gregor Mendel on heredity and variability, and Thomas Hunt Morgan on genes and chromosomes are rightfully considered. It was the work of Morgan that opened up an experimental path of development for genetics. Gregor Mendel and Thomas Hunt Morgan are biologists who became the leading figures and founders of genetics, and all modern molecular biologists should be grateful to them. Their intuitively chosen research objects opened the doors to the world of genome decoding, genetic engineering and transgenic selection.
At the right time and right place.
Biography of Thomas Hunt Morgan does not containtragic rejection of colleagues, prosecution for their ideas, loneliness, undeserved oblivion and invalidity during life. He lived a long time surrounded by close people, built a successful career as a researcher and teacher, became one of the leading figures and icons of fundamental genetics - a science whose representatives still receive more Nobel prizes than scientists in any other field.
Works of Thomas Hunt Morgan and hisstudent co-authors of the beginning of the 20th century absorbed all the accumulated genetic data, the results of the study of cell division (mitosis and meiosis), and conclusions about the role of the cell nucleus and chromosomes in the inheritance of characters. His chromosomal theory explained the nature of human hereditary pathologies, made it possible to experimentally change 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 extending the life, transformations of man and the creation of new organs became just a matter of time.
Aristocratic origin
Autumn afternoon, September 15, 1866 in the cityLexington of the US state of Kentucky, was born the nephew of the legendary General of the Confederate Army Francis Gent Morgan and great-grandson of the first millionaire south-western United States. His father, Charleston Hunt Morgan, is a successful diplomat, consul of America on 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, all summer he helped research teams of the US Geological Survey in the same mountains that were already his family. After finishing school, the boy entered Kentucky College, in 1886 received a bachelor's degree.
Student years
After high school, Thomas Morgan enteredthe only university at that time was named after John Hopkins 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 began embryology at the Woods Hall laboratory, visiting Jamaica and the Bahamas. He receives a master's degree, defends his thesis, and in 1891 heads the faculty of biology at Bryn Mayr College. Since 1894, Thomas Hunt Morgan is an intern at the Zoological Laboratory in Naples. From studying embryology, the scientist proceeds to the study of the inheritance of characters. At that time, there were disputes between preformists (supporters of the presence of structures in the gametes that predetermine the formation of the organism) and epigenists (supporters of development under the influence of external factors). Atheist Thomas Hunt Morgan takes a middle position on this issue. Returning in 1895 from Naples, he received the title of professor. Studying regenerative abilities, he writes two books - The Development of the Frog’s Egg (1897) and Regeneration (1900), but continues to work on heredity and evolution. In 1904, Thomas married his student, Lillian Vaughan Sampson. She not only bore him a son and three daughters, but also became his associate and assistant in the work.
Columbia university
С 1903 года Морган занимает пост профессора Department of Experimental Zoology at the said university. It is here that he will work 24 years and make his famous discoveries. Evolution and inheritance are the main topics of the scientific community of that time. Scientists are looking for confirmation of the theory of natural selection and the "rediscovered" Hugo de Frieze of the laws of inheritance by Mendel. Forty-four-year-old Thomas Hunt Morgan decides to experimentally test the correctness of Georg Mendel and for many years becomes the “lord of the flies” - the fruit flies. The successful choice of the object for experiments made these insects the “sacred cow” of all geneticists for many centuries.
Successful object and colleagues - the key to success
Drosophila melanogaster - small red-eyedfruit fly - turned out to be an ideal object of experiments. It is easy to keep it - up to a thousand individuals perfectly exist in a 1.5 liter milk bottle. It breeds already in the second week of life, it is well defined 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 Bridgers, Alfred Stertevan, Herman Joseph Moller. That’s how, out of the milk bottles stolen from the residents of Manhattan, the legendary “Mushroom Room” was equipped - Laboratory No. 613 in Shemeron Corps at Columbia University.
Innovative teacher
The Morgan "Mushroom Room" is not only famous all over the world and has become a place of pilgrimage for scientists. This room is 24 m.2 changed the very organization of the educational process.The scientist built his work on the principles of democracy, free exchange of opinions, lack of subordination, full transparency for all participants and collective brainstorming in discussing the results and planning experiments. It was this method of teaching that became prevalent in all universities of America, and later spread to Europe.
Pink-eyed fruit fly
Morgan and his students began experiments,having set itself the task of finding out the principles of mutation inheritance. Long two years of breeding flies did not give any visible progress. But a miracle happened - individuals with pink eyes, rudiments of wings, a yellow body appeared, and they gave the material for the emergence of the theory of inheritance. Numerous crossbreeding and counting thousands of descendants, shelves with thousands of bottles and millions of fruit flies - such is the price of success. Convincing evidence of sex-linked inheritance and storage of information about a trait in a particular area (locus) of chromosomes appeared in the article of the scientist "Sex-Inheritance Inheritance" (Sex Limited Inheritance in Drosophila, 1910).
Chromosome theory
The result of all the experiments, the contribution toThomas Hunt Morgan’s biology has become his theory of inheritance. Its main postulate is the material basis of heredity are chromosomes, in which genes are arranged in a linear manner. The discoveries of Thomas Hunt Morgan coupled genes inherited together, and traits that are inherited from the floor, stunned the world (Mechanisms of Mendeleev Heredity, 1915). And it happened just a few years after the introduction into biology of the very concept of “gene” as a structural unit of heredity (V. Johannsen, 1909).
Professional recognition
Although the train of universal glory and did not stretch forscientists, its members make one academy after another. 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 discoveries related to the role of the chromosomes in heredity, the biologist was awarded the Nobel Prize, which he himself shared with Bridges and Startevan. In his arsenal, the Darwin Medal (1924) and the Copley Medal (1939). His name is the Department of Biology of Kentucky and the annual prize of the Society of American Genetics. The unit of gene linking is called Morgana.
After glory
From 1928 until his death, Professor ThomasMorgan led the Kirchhoff Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, USA). Here he became the organizer of the Department of Biology, which raised seven Nobel Prize winners in genetics and evolution. He continued to pursue 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, Thomas Hunt Morgan’s contribution toBiology is comparable to such breakthroughs of human thought as the discovery of the nucleus in physics, the exploration of human space, the development of cybernetics and computer technology. A friendly person with a subtle sense of humor, self-confident, but simple and unpretentious in everyday life - this is what his relatives and colleagues remember. 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 sensations, but scientific understanding of a 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.
