Biographies

Thomas Hunt Morgan

Thomas Hunt Morgan was born on September 25, 1866, at Lexington, Kentucky, U.S.A. He was the eldest son of Charlton Hunt Morgan.

He was educated at the University of Kentucky, where he took his B.S. degree in 1886, subsequently doing postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied morphology with W. K. Brooks, and physiology with H. Newell Martin.
As a child he had shown an immense interest in natural history and even at the age of ten, he collected birds, birds' eggs, and fossils during his life in the country; and in 1887, the year after his graduation, he spent some time at the seashore laboratory of Alphaeus Hyatt at Annisquam, Mass. During the summer of 1888, he was engaged in research for the United States Fish Commission at Woods Hole. In 1890 he spent the summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, thus beginning a long-term association with the MBL as a summer investigator and trustee. In 1890 he obtained his Ph.D. degree at Johns Hopkins University. ln that same year he was awarded the Adam Bruce Fellowship and visited Europe, working especially at the Marine Zoological Laboratory at Naples which he visited again in 1895 and 1900. At Naples he met Hans Driesch and Curt Herbst. The influence of Driesch with whom he later collaborated, no doubt turned his mind in the direction of experimental embryology.

In 1891 he became Associate Professor of Biology at Bryn Mawr College for Women, where he stayed until 1904, when he became Professor of Experimental Zoology at Columbia University, New York. He remained there until 1928, when he was appointed Professor of Biology and Director of the G. Kerckhoff Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology, at Pasadena. Here he remained until 1945. During his later years he had his private laboratory at Corona del Mar, California.

During Morgan's 24-years period at Columbia University his attention was drawn toward the bearing of cytology on the... [continues]

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