The Fly Room

The Story of the Scientists Who Discovered Genetics and Reinvented Evolution

William deJong-Lambert

• Publisher: The American Philosophical Society Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781606181577
• Subtopic: Science & Technology Biographies
• Index: Biological Sciences

The story of the scientists who invented genetics and proved the theory of evolution

The Fly Room tells the story of Nobel Prize-winning biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan's laboratory at Columbia University where, in the early twentieth century, he presided over a handful of students and a roomful of fruit flies who taught him that everything he thought was true was wrong, and everything he thought was wrong was right.

Before Morgan's time, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was regarded as a subject unworthy of serious scientific study—not something you would hear discussed in a laboratory. In its place rose the dark specter of eugenics, with its attendant sinister ambitions to create a superior human race.

But Morgan and his students, by experimenting with and breeding fruit flies, invented genetics, which would eventually lead to the refutation of the theory of eugenics and prove Darwin's theory of evolution right. Meanwhile in Soviet Russia, a country convulsed by revolution, genetics came under attack, forcing researchers to seek refuge in the United States and discover for themselves the scientific breakthroughs taking place in Morgan's laboratory.

Both a collective biography of the men and women who pioneered the field of genetics, as well as a history of how genetics was invented and proven to be the science of evolution, The Fly Room is a compelling read about a fascinating branch of science whose innovations benefit us to the present day.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Prologue
• 1. Thomas Hunt Morgan
• 2. A Winding Path Toward the Gene
• 3. “Sturt” and Bridges
• 4. Hermann J. Muller
• 5. Seeking Stability
• 6. A Complete Chromosome Map, a Fire at Columbia, and the End of an Era
• 7. Julian Huxley
• 8. Muller in Houston, Eugenics in America, War in Europe
• 9. First in an Illyrian Village
• 10. J. B. S. Haldane
• 11. Muller Finds His Mutants
• 12. On the Lunatic Fringe: The Second International Congress of Eugenics
• 13. Aftermath
• 14. “I didn’t know things like this existed!”
• 15. Muller in Russia
• 16. “We are probably building for the future …”
• 17. The Little Brown Book
• 18. The Arrival of Theodosius Dobzhansky
• 19. “The Devil is taking some sinful soul to hell!”
• 20. “Give me any kind of visa you want.”
• 21. “It would be an extremely abnormal person who would not feel so in Russia.”
• 22. “The universe is … queerer than we can suppose.”
• 23. “It would be much better for you to stay in this country for good?”
• 24. “… a normal retardation …”
• 25. “Whoever works under Morgan cannot work with Muller …”
• 26. Salamandra
• 27. The Death of Iurii Filipchenko
• 28. The Arrival of Carlos Offermann, and the Last Visit of Vavilov
• 29. “Patience has its limits …”
• 30. Bridges Arrives in the USSR and Offermann Converts to Socialism
• 31. Muller Lost
• 32. “Your article on eugenics appears to me to be rather moderate …”
• 33. “Darwinism is dead.”—any sermon
• 34. Bridges and the Right Honorable Martiana Wentworth B. Hays-Davis
• 35. Nikolai Vavilov Arrives for the Last Time
• 36. The Third International Congress of Eugenics
• 37. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko
• 38. Muller Sets Off Again for the Soviet Union
• 39. “The real reason why I’m late is because I collected …”
• 40. “Scientific progress in general seems to have a very dark future …”
• 41. “I wrote him a long letter to-day asking that we live separately in Russia …”
• 42. “I am very happy of course to hear about the award.”
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index