Joseph Muller Accomplishments

Born in New York City in 1890, Herman Joseph Muller was an American geneticist noted for his work on the genetic and physiological effects of radiation. Muller spent many of his years trying to raise public awareness on the harmful long-term effects of radiation focusing on effects from nuclear war and nuclear testing. Muller “contributed over 300 articles on biological subjects to the scientific publications of learned societies” throughout his career (nobelprize.org) His achievements earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1946. Hermann Joseph Muller was raised in Harlem. As a child, Muller’s parents sparked in him an interest in nature and the idea of evolution. He attended high school at Morris High School in the Bronx where he and two other students founded what may have been one of the first science clubs. In 1907, Muller was awarded the Cooper-Hewitt scholarship which allowed him to attend Columbia College at the age of 16. While in his first year at Columbia College he became intrigued with the study of biology. In that first

In 1946 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for the discovery that mutations could be induced by X-rays. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought widespread attention of the public to issues that Muller had been circulating and trying to bring to the public for nearly two decades. Nuclear fallout became a public issue in 1952 due to increasing evidence brought to light about radiation sickness linked to Operation Crossroads. Operation Crossroads was “a pair of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll” after which “a series of large thermonuclear tests rendered Bikini unfit for subsistence farming and fishing because of radioactive contamination” (insert ??) He, along with many other scientists, signed a petition in 1958 to end all nuclear weapons testing. Muller died on April 5, 1967 at the age of