Hermann Joseph MullerDied 5 Apr 1967 at age 76 (born 21 Dec 1890). American geneticist who demonstrated that mutations and hereditary changes could be caused by X-rays striking the genes and chromosomes of living cells (first produced in the fruit fly Drosophila in 1927). His first task - to create procedures to exactly measure the mutation frequency - took several years. Then he investigated the effect of different agents on the frequency of mutations. He found that experiments could be arranged, for instance, so that nearly 100 per cent of the offspring of irradiated flies showed mutations. Thus a possibility had been created for the first time of influencing the hereditary mass itself artificially. Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1946.« |
