of a holistic, transcendental approach to biology called
naturphilosophie that was extended by
Goethe. It tried to make sense of homologous structures and how they came to be modified.
Antonio Scarpa (1752–1832) was born in Liorenzaga, Italy, and died in Padua, Italy. He received his medical degree at the University of Padua, studying with Giovanni Battista Morgani. He studied the anatomy of the inner ear and cardiac nerves. He taught at the University of Modena. He was a bachelor and had several children out of wedlock. Born poor, he became wealthy, and a collector of art. Scarpa’s most noted student was Ignaz Döllinger .
Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682–1771) was born in Foril, Italy, and died in Padua, Italy. He was a professor of anatomical pathology at the University of Padua. He rejected the prevailing view of the time that disease was systemic (influenced by vital humors or toxins). Instead he argued that it had a localized origin and was usually organ specific. He wrote a five-volume treatise, On the Seat and Causes of Diseases based on 640 dissections he carried out. His most famous student was Antonio Scarpa. His mentor was Antonio Maria Valsalva.
Antonio Maria Valsalva (1666–1723) was born in Imola, Italy. He studied the anatomy of the throat and named the Eustachian tube. His mentor was Marcello Malpighi.
Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) was born near Bologna, Italy. He has been described as “the father of microscopic anatomy, histology, physiology, and embryology.” He discovered the trachea network in insects and associated them with breathing. He discovered the Malpighian tubes in kidneys and demonstrated that the pigment of Africans was in a lower layer of the skin. He identified the capillaries as the structures that connected arterial blood to venous blood flow. His colleague Giovanni Alfonso Borelli at Pisa introduced him to experimental science and Malpighi chose the microscope for his studies. He was an excellent artist and drew careful illustrations of his microscopic specimens. He demonstrated that galls found in plants were caused by insects that laid eggs in the plant tissue. The Royal Society in London published many of his findings in plant and animal cellular anatomy.
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679) was born in Naples of a Spanish father and Italian mother. He took an interest in experimental physics and mathematics but became a physician. For his medical studies, he took an interest in animal motion and worked out the relation of muscles and bones to limb motion. He was also the first to note the existence of stomata in plant leaves. He is considered the founder of the field of biophysics. He was mentored by Benedetto Castelli with whom he studied the detailed orbits of Jupiter’s moons.
Benedetto Castelli (1578–1643) was born in Brescia, Italy, and became a mathematician and taught at the University of Padua before becoming the Abbott of Monte Casino. He worked on sunspots with his mentor Galileo Galilei.
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was born in Pisa, Italy. His father was a composer and played the lute. He wanted Galileo to become a physician but while in medical school Galileo found courses on astronomy and science more interesting and convinced his father to let him change his field. He studied mathematics and made contributions to the physics of falling bodies, using experiments to demonstrate these laws. He moved to the University of Padua where he taught and wrote most of his books. He also made a telescope and applied it to the skies. He discovered the moon had craters, Venus had phases like the moon, Jupiter had four moons, and the sun had sunspots that followed its rotation. He also described Saturn as having “ears” because the rings at that time were tilted and the lenses were not as sharp as later lenses that revealed these were rings. He felt he had the evidence for the Copernican theory and began a series of disputes with his fellow astronomers. He replied in polemic style ridiculing his opponents, many of them Jesuits or influential in the Church. This led to his eventual trial and conviction as a heretic forcing recantation and household arrest for the rest of his life. He is considered one of the greatest scientists of all time and he helped launch the scientific revolution of the later Renaissance. His mentor in Pisa was Ostilio Ricci.
Ostilio Ricci (1540–1603) was a mathematician who taught at the University of Pisa. Galileo took his courses and was converted by Ricci to become a scientist and mathematician. He taught Galileo Euclidian and Archimedean mathematics. Ricci believed that mathematics was not a science itself but a tool that could be used for applied science. He was mentored by Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia.
Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia (1499–1557) was born in Brescia. When the French defeated the Italians in that region they massacred most of its inhabitants. Niccolò was a child and was hit by a saber that sliced his jaw and palate. His mother nursed him back to health, but it made speech difficult and his nickname (the stammerer) became his last name. He never shaved, believing his beard would hide his wounds. He learned engineering and wrote books on applied mathematics. He worked out the mathematics for ballistics. He wrote a treatise on salvaging sunken ships. He translated Euclid into Italian. He solved the mathematics for cubic equations. His treatise on mathematics was a sixteenth century best seller. His most famous student was Ostilio Ricci.
9My Connection to Muller’s Academic Pedigree
In his academic career, Muller served as a mentor to numerous students. Most of these were graduate students, technicians, and students in his classes at Columbia, at Rice University, at the University of Texas, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, at the genetic institutes in Moscow and Leningrad when he was in the USSR, at the University of Edinburgh, at Amherst College during WWII, and at Indiana University. Two students who did not go into genetics are of interest. Amelia Earhart took Muller’s course when she was an undergraduate at Barnard College and he was a graduate student. They became friends. She wanted Muller to take flying lessons, but he couldn’t afford them. Carl Sagan spent a summer as an undergraduate working in Muller’s laboratory. He was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago at the time. He hoped to apply his knowledge of genetics to astronomy, especially the hunt for intelligent life in the universe and the chemical stages of evolution leading to life.
Among his students at the graduate level are (in chronological order): B. Glass, W. S. Stone, C. P. Oliver, D. Raffel, A. Prokofeyeva, C. Offerman, I. Agol, J. Kerkis, S. Levitt, R. Berg, G. Pontecorvo, C. Auerbach, A. R. Sidky, S. P. Ray-Choudhury, I. Oster, S. Abrahamson, A. Schalet, S. Iyengar, E. Carlson, W. Ostertag, S. Frye, William Trout III, and D. Wagoner. Like me, all these students and the students they mentored, could attach themselves to the Muller pedigree. Colleagues who were mentored by Muller include E. Altenburg, J. Huxley, J. Patterson, T. Painter, A. Serebrovsky, N. Dubinin, N. N. Medvedev, N. Timofeef-Ressovsky, M. Delbrück, J. D. Watson, and J. Crow. At the same time, colleagues were providing skills and ideas to Muller and the exchanges were often two way. That happens also with graduate students and postdoctoral students where ideas are freely exchanged. Note that at least 35 people can be attached to Muller’s academic pedigree.
While Muller was influential on my life as my primary mentor for genetics, I had a second, earlier, profound mentor when I was in Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, NY from
