In Pursuit of the Gene

THE FLY ROOM © 195
ing established, and it soon became the unspoken policy of the lab that
while published results and unpublished data were to be acknowledged,
general theoretical contributions and specific ideas for the design of experiments
to test them were common property. 31 For Muller, who provided an
inexhaustible flow of new ideas, many of which would turn out to be absolutely
crucial to the continuing development of the subject, the policy was
grossly unfair.
While Muller had wanted nothing more than to join the Drosophila
work after college, he had been forced to support himself as a graduate student
in physiology. During this period in exile, he later recalled that the
only time he had to think about the Drosophila work was on the New York
subway while he commuted to and from his night job teaching English to
foreigners in the New York public schools, a job he needed to supplement
his meager income. While he struggled to support himself, Muller could
not help resenting the fact that Morgan lavished support on Sturtevant,
paying out of his own pocket in his final semester of Columbia after his undergraduate
fellowship ran out and then supporting him on his Carnegie
grant, freeing Sturtevant of the teaching obligations that would have otherwise
diverted a great deal of his time and energy from his fly work. 32
But the bond between Morgan and Sturtevant was more like father
and son than professor and student. Unlike his own father, who had cut
him out of his will, Morgan was unfailingly solicitous and generous toward
his surrogate son Sturtevant, and Sturtevant, who brought fame and attention
to Morgan and himself with his first genetic map, more than repaid
Morgan’s fatherly devotion. 33 Sturtevant was every professor’s dream student:
self-confident, independent, and productive. He had a prodigious
memory, and was the one to whom all questions concerning the scientific
literature were referred. In his later years he found relaxation in reading
through the Encyclopedia Britannica, but he complained that it was difficult to
find an article that he had not already read. His encyclopedic grasp of the
facts of genetics, essential and arcane, was a marvel to all who knew him,
and he was an ace problem solver, capable of completing the most difficult
Sunday crossword puzzle in a single sitting.
Muller’s first in-depth exposure to Morgan was in the year 1910–11