Hermann Joseph Muller

Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, has been used as a model organism in both medical and scientific research for over a century. Work by Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945) and his students at Columbia University at the beginning of the twentieth century led to great discoveries such as sex-linked inheritance and that ionising radiation causes mutations in genes. However, the use of Drosophila was not limited to genetic research.