In Pursuit of the Gene

338 ¨ NOTES TO PAGES 235–239
“Observations of Biological Science in Russia,” Scientific Monthly 16 [1923]: 541).
Dobzhansky also describes the summer of 1920 when he was starving (Theodosius
Grigorievich Dobzhansky, Dobzhansky’s Genetics of Natural Populations, chaps. 1–43, ed.
R. C. Lewontin [New York: Columbia University Press, 1981], pp. 8–10).
45. Muller describes this work in an article he wrote upon his return, “Biological
Science in Russia,” 540. Two of Serebrovsky’s students, Agol and Levitt, would win
Rockefeller Fellowships to work with Muller in Texas in 1930.
46. William Bateson to Beatrice Bateson, Sept. 9, 1925, Bateson MSS, reel F, no. 35.
47. N. I. Vavilov to William Bateson, May 10, 1922, Bateson MSS, reel F, no. 43. The
fact that Vavilov lived in his office can be found in Th. Dobzhansky, “N. I. Vavilov:
A Martyr of Genetics, 1887–1942,” Journal of Heredity 38 (1947): 229.
48. With his “Law of Parallel Variations,” Vavilov believed he could determine the
geographic origin of certain cereals (Muller, “Biological Science in Russia,” 549).
49. Letter from H. J. Muller to O. Mohr, Mar. 24, 1925, Muller MSS.
50. Harold H. Plough, “Radium Radiations and Crossing Over,” American Naturalist
58 (1924): 85–87.
51. J. W. Mavor, “An Effect of X Rays on the Linkage of Mendelian Characters in
the First Chromosome of Drosophila,” Genetics 8 (1923): 355.
52. H. J. Muller to Edgar Altenburg, Oct. 22, 1924, Muller MSS. Letter must be
misdated because he proposed that Edgar visit not just him and Jessie, but also David,
who was not yet born.
53. Ibid.
54. H. J. Muller to Edgar Altenburg, Nov. 12, 1924, Muller MSS.
55. Following Mavor, a radiologist at Union College in Schenectady, who had
found that a machine that produced X-rays accelerated the rate of exchange in the
X chromosomes and decreased the rate of exchange in the 2nd chromosome
(Mavor, “Effect of X Rays,” 355).
56. Robert P. Wagner and James F. Crow, “The Other Fly Room: J. T. Patterson
and Texas Genetics,” Genetics 157 (2001): 1.
57. Muller, “Mutation Rate in Drosophila,” 343–344.
58. Ibid., 344.
59. When males were X-rayed, only those chromosomes derived from the male
parent were mutated, and likewise only the chromosomes derived from the female
parent showed new lethals when the female was X-rayed.
60. Male flies whose sperm had been X-rayed were mated in individual vials to C �Bfemales
and grown up for two generations. As can be seen by considering the fig-