The Other Fly Room: J. T. Patterson and Texas Genetics

TO geneticists, “The Fly Room” means the Drosophila lab at Columbia University in New York. Here T. H. Morgan and his brilliant students, C. B. Bridges, A. H. Sturtevant, and H. J. Muller worked together in a single room and laid the foundation for the magnificent edifice that is Drosophila genetics. The room was small (16 by 23 feet) and it was very crowded, for often there were other students and visiting researchers. But the close confinement brought a benefit. As Sturtevant (1965, p. 49) described it, “There was an atmosphere of excitement in the laboratory, and a great deal of discussion and argument about each new result as the work rapidly developed.... There was a give-and-take atmosphere in the fly room. As each new result came along, the group discussed it freely. The published accounts do not always indicate the sources of the ideas. It was often not only impossible to say, but it was felt to be unimportant, who first had an idea.” The room was used continuously from Morgan’s early days until the group moved to CalTech in 1928.