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Thursday, April 6,196? THE WASHINGTON POST

 

Hermann J. Muller Dies at 7 6:|

Discovered Perils of Radiation :

By Howard Simons
"“" Washington Post Staff Writer

-Nobel Prize winner Dr. Her-
mann J. Muller, 76, the Ameri-
can-born scientist who discov-
ered that radiation can cause
héreditary changes, died yes-
térday in Bloomington, Ind. He
had been hospitalized for sev-
eral months with a heart con-
dition.

»Dr. Muller was small in size,
five feet three inches, but large
in stature as a scientist. He
was one of the world’s fore-
most geneticists.

~In addition to his pioneering

work on radiation’s genetic ef-
fects, Dr. Muller also discov-

‘ered that most mutations—

changes in the characteristics
of-plants and animals that can

be passed on to their offspring .

—are lethal.

-And he was a leading ex-
ponent of sperm banks—reser-
voirs of the male sperm cell
frozen for use by artificial in-
semination at a future date.

. Dr. Muller’s ideas often were
controversial. And he, himself,
often was at the center of con-
troversy.

Derided Lysenko

* He went to Russia in 1933 to
work at the famed Moscow In-
stitute of Genetics. At that
time, Dr. Muller thought com-
munism a likely hope for man-
kind. After four years at the
Institute, he sensed the in-
creasing power of pseudo-
geneticist Trofim Lysenko. Dr.
Muller left Russia in 1937.

*, AS one after another of Dr.
Muller’s bona fide gencticist
friends were sent to Russian
Jabor camps, he became a bit-
‘ter foe of communism and Ly-
senko.

. Lysenkoism, which domi-
nated and damaged Russian
biology for more than two
decades, has since lost favor in

a riper ett

 

 

Associated Press

DR. HERMANN J, MULLER .

 

Russia. But it is only now that
Russian genetics is recovering
from the “charlatan” Lysenko,
as Dr. Muller once tagged him.

Dispute with AEC

Eighteen years later, in 1955,
Dr. Muller tangled with the
Atomic Energy Commission
over the crude way the then
excessively sensitive and se-
cret agency prevented him
from delivering a scientific pa-
per at the United Nations At-
oms-for-Peace Conference in
Geneva.

He was going to talk about
what he knew best: “How
Radiation Changes the Genet-
ic Constitution.” It was a sub-
ject that had taken on enor-
mous significance once the
full impact of fallout from nu-
clear testing became known.
Though Dr. Muller’s paper did
not draw econelusions about
the genetic damage from
atomic testing, the . AEC
thought otherwise.

On other occasions, Dr. Mul-

 

ler did speak out about the/

dangers from radiation to
mankind's future. Like most,
if not all geneticists, he never
subscribed to the idea that
there is a tolerable level of
radiation. Rather, for geneti-
cists, any amount of radiation
is potentially harmful to fu-
ture generations, whether the
radiation comes from atomic
testing or X-ray machines.

Reduced X-Ray Danger

Indeed, it was largely
through Dr. Muller’s sub-
sequent efforts as a member
of a National Academy of
Sciences’ committee that the
radiation dose from medical
X-ray machines has been
greatly reduced in the United
States.

It was in 1927 that Dr. Mul-
ler drew attention of world
biologists by disclosing that
genes, the carriers of heredity,
ean be artifically altered by
X-rays. Over the next 20 years
his landmark research was re-
peatedly confirmed. In 1946.
he received the Nobel Prize
for the discovery.

But not all Dr. Mulier’ Ss
scientific thrusts — and he
thrust often — met with uni-
versal welcome. His sperm
bank proposal, for example,
invited some criticism. It was
his idea, variously expressed
at different times, that the
sperm of the great and glori-
ous should be collected,
stored, and then used to per-
petuate a kind of better civili-
zation.

The idea seemed totalitarian
to some thinkers. And curious-
ly, Mr. Muller, who scorned
the distorted genetics of Nazi
Germany and Stalinist Russia,
now was attacked for his ap-
proach to eugenics.

Nonetheless, other persons
defend Mr, Muller’s point of

 

view. One of his former stu-|*:
dents, geneticist and educator

H. Bentley Glass, for example,
suggests that future -develop-
ments in the control of the
reproductive process will. go
far beyond sperm banks to
include, ova banks; transplant-
able embryos and even “the
bottle babies of (Aldous) Hux-
ley’s ‘Brave New World.’”

“What Dr. Muller was pro-i

pounding, says Glass, was the
idea that less moral nations
might try to create a race of
“supermen” through this
means and if this were to suc-
ceed it would “set a mark like
Sputnik to terrify the rest of
the world.”

Columbia “Boy Wonder”

Being a cranky conscience
of genetics and the social im-
plications of scientific discov-
ery, was Dr. Muller’s mark.

So, too, was his sense of wit.)}

He once said that the evolu-
tion of his hair was from
brown to gray to bald.

Dr. Muller was born in New

York City and was educated |'
at Columbia University where] }}

he was one of three “boy won-
ders,” who
Thomas Hunt Morgan cata-
pulted American genetics in-
to a leading world position.
From Columbia he went to

Texas where he did his prize-''

winning research, and from
Texas to Germany-and Russia
and Scotland. Then, back to
the United States and Am.
herst College. Finally, in 1945
Dr. Muller became a profes-
sor at Indiana University in
Bloomington.

He is survived by his wife,
Dorothea; a son, David, pro-
fessor of mathematics at the
University of Illinois; and a
daughter, Mrs. K. Moe Hunt,
whose husband teaches at the
University of Hawaii.

 

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