Thomas Hunt Morgan

Thomas Hunt Morgan (September 25, 1866 - December 4, 1945) worked in natural history, zoology, and macromutation in Drosophila. His most important contributions to science were in genetics, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 and proved chromosomes to be the carriers of genes.

He was born in Lexington, Kentucky. Morgan received his bachelor's degree from the University of Kentucky in 1886 and his master's degree in 1888. He received his Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University in 1890. Working on the embryonic development of Drosophila (the fruit fly) at Columbia University, he noticed a white-eyed mutant among the red-eyed wild types. This observation prompted him to study Gregor Mendel's theories in genetics using Drosophila. Because of his work, Drosophila became one of the major animal models in genetics. He and his students counted the characteristics of thousands of fruit flies and studied their inheritance. Morgan moved to the California Institute of Technology in 1928. George Wells Beadle, winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, worked with him at Caltech. Morgan died in Pasadena, California.