In Pursuit of the Gene

THE FLY ROOM © 187
bringing a lawsuit against Morgan. This book, which was widely translated
into foreign languages, brought Morgan worldwide fame, and in Russia,
Morganism became synonymous with Mendelism. 5
Although both Morgan and Sturtevant went to considerable pains to
convey the impression that the problem in the fly room was caused by
Muller’s competitiveness and obsession with priority, the atmosphere in the
lab did not improve with Muller’s departure. According to the Russian
cytologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, who joined the lab in 1928 and would
go on to gain renown for his work in experimental population genetics,
Bridges and Sturtevant “had this intense resentment and jealousy, largely
to Morgan and also to each other.” Unable to express himself to Morgan,
with whom he’d always played the role of favored son, Sturtevant became
deeply embittered. Dobzhansky recalled that a “conversation about Morgan
having taken the credit for what has been made by him, Sturtevant, was
repeated again and again and again and again.” 6 In the end Sturtevant’s
loyalty to Morgan prevented him from ever asserting himself or achieving
independence. Years of deferring to the boss had instilled in Sturtevant
a fundamental passivity and indecisiveness, “the boss was the boss, and
Sturtevant deferred in gloomy silence,” as historian of science Rob Kohler
summarized Sturtevant’s attitude in the latter years. 7
Filled with rage and disappointment over his own failure to achieve independence
from Morgan, Sturtevant tried to make sure that Muller—the
disfavored son—did not end up outdoing him in history’s eyes. In a biographical
memoir of Morgan written for the National Academy of Sciences
in 1959, Sturtevant made a bold, possibly unconscious, attempt to expunge
Muller from the history of genetics as well as from his otherwise prodigious
memory. In his description of the early fly room, Sturtevant left Muller off
of a list of persons who had been given desks in the fly room, relegating
him instead to a group of “Others, who did not have desks in the fly-room,
but worked actively with the group and were often in and out.” Among
this secondary group, Sturtevant acknowledged that “H. J. Muller must be
specially indicated, since his share in the early developments was especially
important.” 8
While his friends and supporters had for years urged him to ignore the
perceived slights of Morgan and Sturtevant, Muller, who was by then a