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Alfred Sturtevant relaxing at Woods Hole, 1916. Sturtevant often joined T.H. Morgan and his family on their summer retreats there.
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Alfred Sturtevant in his World War I army uniform, 1918.
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1919 welcome home party for Sturtevant on his return from military service in WWI. Parties and social events were not uncommon to the Fly group. Morgan hosted many of them.
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Biology staff at Caltech, 1930. Alfred Sturtevant and Calvin Bridges went with T.H. Morgan to Caltech in 1928.
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Alfred Sturtevant on a visit to E.G. Anderson's corn field, 1937.
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Alfred Sturtevant at his desk in Caltech, 1949.
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Alfred Sturtevant working with fly stocks at Caltech, 1949.
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Calvin Bridges pitching horseshoes at Woods Hole, 1922.
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Calvin Bridges in Fly Room at Columbia around 1926. Note the crowded conditions.
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Calvin Bridges in Fly Stock Room in Caltech, around 1935. Fly stocks now had their own room as opposed to being stacked on people's desks.
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Calvin Bridges pointing to Drosophila map pillar, a method of identification he devised. Each side of the pillar represented one Drosophila chromosome, around 1935.
Audio Glossary
Chromosome, Gene mapping, Genetic map, LinkageVideo Interviews
Garland Allen is a Professor in the Evolutionary and Population Biology Program at Washington University in St. Louis. He authored Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man & His Science, and several texts, including Matter, Energy and Life and The Study of Biology.
Clip 1 (0:35)
Thomas Hunt Morgan's talent as a laboratory group leader.
Clip 2 (0:55)
Morgan's three "star" students: Sturtevant, Bridges, and Muller.
Clip 3 (1:07)
The genesis of the idea of crossing over.
Clip 4 (0:35)
The experimental evidence for crossing over.
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Alfred Sturtevant and Calvin Bridges were both students of Thomas Hunt Morgan. Sturtevant provided proof of genetic linkage. Bridges advanced the theory of chromosomal non-disjunction, and did a lot of work on chromosomal banding patterns.
ALFRED HENRY STURTEVANT (1891-1970)
Alfred Henry Sturtevant was born in Jacksonville, Illinois. Sturtevant was always interested in inheritance and genetics. One of Sturtevant's earliest publications was a pedigree analysis of horses owned by his father. In 1909, while an undergraduate at Columbia University, Sturtevant attended a lecture given by Thomas Hunt Morgan. It was one of the few undergraduate classes that Morgan ever taught. Morgan's passion for science and discovery interested Sturtevant so much that he approached Morgan about working for him. Sturtevant became one of Morgan's first students in the "Fly room" to work on Drosophila melanogaster. For his Ph.D. thesis, Sturtevant published the world's first genetic map. The idea of gene linkage came to him in a flash one night. He and the other members of Morgan's lab had been discussing a paper on the coat color of rabbits. Sturtevant realized that genes were linked in a series, and data as to how these genes were linked could be deduced by building the "right" Drosophila mutant. Sturtevant stayed up most of one night working out the details of linkage analysis instead of doing his undergraduate homework. In 1928, Sturtevant, along with Thomas Hunt Morgan and Calvin Bridges, moved to the California Institute of Technology. Sturtevant was a Professor of Biology at Cal Tech until 1951. CALVIN BLACKMAN BRIDGES (1889-1938)
Calvin Bridges was born in Schuyler Falls, New York. He was orphaned at an early age, and raised by his grandparents. In 1909, after attending one of the few courses taught by Thomas Hunt Morgan, Bridges joined Morgan's lab at Columbia to do research in the new field of genetics. A freshman at the time, Bridges was given the lowly job of washing out the fly bottles. As legend has it, Bridges found the first Drosophila mutant, the white-eyed fly, just as he was about to wash out one of the bottles. According to his lab mate, Alfred Sturtevant, Bridges had the best "eyes" in the lab for finding new Drosophila mutants and the most skill and patience for building new strains for testing. Many of these Drosophila strains are still in use today. Bridges was also very inventive. He developed a cheaper fly-food mix to replace bananas. He designed the binocular microscope for examining flies, and he also designed the temperature-regulated incubators to grow the flies in. Some of Bridges' scientific credits include the theory of chromosomal non-disjunction (non-segregation of paired chromosomes), setting up the nomenclature system for naming fly mutants and providing most of the data correlating Drosophila genes with banding patterns in salivary chromosomes. In 1928, Bridges moved with Morgan to the California Institute of Technology, though he retained his position as research associate at Columbia. In a biography, Thomas Hunt Morgan wrote of Bridges that "he was simple and unaffected and always helpful to anyone who came to him for advice." In 1938, Bridges died of heart failure due to complications from a heart valve infection. |
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LinksThe Interactive FlyThis site has a nice collection of pictures and images of Drosophila in various stages of development. It also has summaries of different Drosophila genes known to affect development. Electron micrographs of Drosophila ChromosomesClick to look at electron micrographs of fruit fly chromosomes as published in the journal Hereditas by a group at the University of Helsinki. Mutant Fruit FliesThe Exploratorium in San Francisco has posted a page with cartoons of different mutants. Bibliography
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