A TRIPLE PLEASURE WORTH SHARING

I was invited by the Molecular Biology Institute and Biology Department at Indiana University in Bloomington to give a talk in their weekly seminar series. My host was Michael Lynch a well known molecular population geneticist whose work on mutations, evolution, and mutation rates is well known and appreciated among geneticists.  I gave the lecture on H J Muller, my mentor and Indiana University’s first Nobel laureate.  I had never used Power Point before and the day before my lecture I visited Lynch at his office in Jordan Hall.  He downloaded my disc onto his computer and showed me what I would have to do to move slides back and forth.  The lecture was in Myers hall where the Molecular Biology Institute is housed.  The auditorium holds about 300 people and at 4 PM it was packed.  I botched the moving of the slides from the computer to the large screen but fortunately Lynch came to my rescue.  But I was in full control in delivering the lecture which was rich in anecdotes.  Nedra said that I hadn’t lost my touch (she took my genetics course in the summer of 1958). Equally engaging was the question and answer period.  I showed two pages from my notebook for Muller’s course in Mutation and the Gene which I took in early 1955. I was interested in Muller since my high school days and when I took his course I wanted to see how he thought. So not only did I take notes on the “winning of the facts” as he called it, but his reasons for the course and the value of knowledge of the history of genetics.  My talk was well received and afterwards Nedra and I were invited to a dinner at a steak house where I enjoyed a margarita (which I shared with Nedra). It was delightful to have two hours of conversation and a superb filet mignon. I thanked my host because I felt rejuvenated.  It has been about 14 years since I have given a lecture to a large audience.  It carried me back to the endorphin rushes of lecturing in my Biology 101-102 course at Stony Brook University.  It gave me great satisfaction to discuss Muller’s life and the significance of his work in radiation genetics and evolutionary genetics and his efforts to help humanity. Muller denounced the racism, sexism, and class prejudice of the eugenics movement in the United States. He condemned (in Moscow in 1937) the attacks on genetics by a politically backed view of heredity whose advocate in that audience (T D Lysenko) Muller denounced as a charlatan.  During the Cold War, Muller was a leading critic of the abuses of radiation exposure.  It was also important, I felt to show his flawed personality, and I included a photocopy of his suicide note in 1932 in Texas when psychological depression made him feel unworthy of carrying on his career or life.  Fortunately he recovered and found positive outlets for the insecurities he harbored. The capstone of my pleasure was that I was giving this lecture at Indiana University where I had gotten my PhD working in Muller’s laboratory.

COMPOSING ONE'S LIFE: H. J. MULLER AND THE INFLUENCE OF A NOBEL LAUREATE MENTOR

 

In 1953 I joined the laboratory of H. J. Muller at Indiana University in Bloomington.  Muller received a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1946 for his work inducing mutations in fruit flies with x-rays.  He is considered the founding father of radiation genetics.  He had considerable fame before his discovery of radiation mutagenesis and with T. H. Morgan, C. B. Bridges, and A. H. Sturtevant was a member of the “fly lab” that helped launch classical genetics in the United States. 

Working with Muller was intense because he worked seven days a week and expected his students to do so also.  He was committed to genetics as his life’s work and communicated that energy and enthusiasm by his example.  He taught three courses each year and brought to them the latest knowledge in genetics and the history of each topic we explored.  He liked to think on his feet and rarely had more than a 3 inch square piece of paper with notes for his lectures.  Muller told us that genetics was not like a game. He said it was the most subversive science because it dealt with the most controversial implications for society.  He took a leading role in defending the public from radiation abuse.  There was plenty of that in medicine -- excess radiation used when not needed such as straightening out a child’s bow legs, using radiation at very high doses (100 roentgens) to induce ovulation in infertile women, routine x-raying in the pelvic (gonadal) area by chiropractors.  There was also abuse in commercial applications (shoe fitting in shoe stores using fluoroscopes).  Manufacturing usage often involved x-raying welding for ship building with inadequate or no shielding for workers. After WW II he spoke out against abuses by the military with excessive atmospheric testing and poor protection for soldiers and sailors during those military exercises.  Muller felt risks should be understood and doses kept as low as possible and abuses regulated by law. 

Muller’s life was filled with contradictions and controversies.  He believed in freedom but he naively believed that freedom existed in the USSR.  When he went there in 1933-1937 he learned he was wrong and two of his students were arrested and executed as Trotskyites.  Muller had the courage to debate T. D. Lysenko who advocated western genetics was a bourgeois fascistic invention and that Lysenko could alter heredity by shattering it and retraining it.  Muller called Lysenko on stage a charlatan no different from those practicing shamanism and quackery.  Muller’s conscience resonated with my own and I have tried to communicate to my students in my non-majors biology classes that scientific knowledge has to be applied in an ethical context because there are unintended consequences to the uses of new knowledge.  I later wrote Muller’s biography and over the years I have had to respond to attacks on his integrity as a scientist by those that Muller would accuse of living by wishful thinking or denial.