Hermann Joseph Müller

Hermann Joseph Muller (New York, December 21, 1890 – Indianapolis, April 5, 1967) was an American biologist and geneticist. The renovator of genetics. He is the author of notable studies on the action of X-rays as mutation producers, the action of radiation on cells; For these works he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1946.

He studied at Columbia University. He taught at the University of Texas from 1920 to 1933, where he was appointed professor of zoology in 1925. From 1933 to 1937 he worked as a geneticist at the Moscow Institute of Genetics, founding an active research group that was affected by scientific debates. -ideological around the genetics of the Stalinist period (Trofim Lysenko's anti-genetic campaign). Leaving the Soviet Union, he passed through Spain, where the Spanish Civil War was already underway, helping to organize the medical services of the Republican side.For the next three years, as an associate researcher at the Institute of Animal Genetics at the University of Edinburgh.

From 1945 to 1964 he was professor of zoology at Indiana University. Muller's research in the field of genetics, which he began in 1911, was based primarily on the experimental breeding of the Drosophila fruit fly. His writings include Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity (1915), Genetics, Medicine and Man. authors, 1947), Studies in Genetics (Genetic Studies, 1962) and numerous scientific papers.