Thomas Hunt Morgan

Overview

Morgan began as a sceptic of Mendelian inheritance and of Darwinian selection alike, and set out to test both by breeding Drosophila in quantity. A single white-eyed male fly in 1910 gave him the result that changed his mind: the trait tracked with sex, which meant the hereditary unit responsible sat on the chromosome that determines sex. His group then used the frequency with which traits are inherited together to place genes in linear order along chromosomes, producing the first genetic maps. Start with The Theory of the Gene, which states the position after two decades of results; The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity is the fuller record of how the maps were built.

Where to start reading

• The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity 1915

  Written with Sturtevant, Muller, and Bridges, it sets out the chromosome theory of heredity and the linkage evidence behind the first genetic maps.

• The Theory of the Gene 1926

  A consolidated statement of what a gene was taken to be at the point when it was a mapped position on a chromosome rather than a molecule.

Part of

• Genetics

Sources

1. Thomas Hunt Morgan Wikipedia
2. Thomas H. Morgan The Nobel Prize
3. Gregor Mendel and Single-Gene Disorders Nature Education Scitable