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The Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal
Nominations now being accepted
Deadline for Nominations: October 3, 2019
The Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal is awarded to an individual GSA member for lifetime achievement in the field of genetics. It recognizes the full body of work of an exceptional geneticist. Recipients of the Medal will have made substantial contributions to genetics throughout a full career.
The Medal was established by GSA in 1981 and named in honor of Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945), a 1933 Nobel Prize winner who received this award for his work with Drosophila and his “discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity.” Morgan recognized that Drosophila, which could be bred quickly and inexpensively, had large quantities of offspring and a short life cycle, would make an excellent organism for genetic studies. His studies of the white mutation and discovery of sex-linked inheritance provided the first experimental evidence that chromosomes are the carriers of genetic information. Subsequent studies in his laboratory led to the discovery of recombination and the first genetic maps.
Born shortly after the Civil War in 1866 and raised in Kentucky, Morgan received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and spent most of his professional life teaching at three institutions: Bryn Mawr College for Women (1891-1904), Columbia University in New York (1904-1928) and the California Institute of Technology (1928-1942). Like flies attracted to honey, Morgan attracted talented graduate students at Columbia, including A. H. Sturtevant (GSA President, 1944), C. B. Bridges (published the first paper in the first volume of GENETICS) and H. J. Muller (Nobel Laureate, 1946; GSA President, 1947), which is part of his legacy to the field of genetics. At Caltech, he became the first Director of the Biology Division and by then moved from studying Drosophila to marine animals, which had been an earlier interest for him. Morgan was not only interested in genetics, but he was also known for his work in experimental embryology and regeneration.
Nominees will be considered for three years without the need to update information.
Eligibility
To be considered for the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, both the nominator and the nominee must be members of GSA. Nominees must have made a substantial contribution to the genetics field, and they must have a strong history as a mentor to fellow geneticists.
Selection Criteria
Reviewers consider the following criteria when selecting a recipient:
Recipients
| 2019 |
Daniel Hartl, Harvard University |
| 2018 |
Barbara Meyer, University of California, Berkeley |
| 2017 |
Richard C. Lewontin, Harvard University |
| 2016 |
Nancy Kleckner, Harvard University |
| 2015 |
Brian Charlesworth, University of Edinburgh, UK |
| 2014 |
Frederick M. Ausubel, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital |
| 2013 |
Thomas Petes, Duke University |
| 2012 |
Kathryn V. Anderson, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center |
| 2011 |
James E. Haber, Brandeis University |
| 2010 |
Alexander Tzagoloff, Columbia University |
| 2009 |
John Roth, University of California, Davis |
| 2008 |
Michael Ashburner, Cambridge University, UK |
| 2007 |
Oliver Smithies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| 2006 |
Masatoshi Nei, Penn State University |
| 2005 |
Robert L. Metzenberg, University of California, Los Angeles |
| 2004 |
Bruce N. Ames, University of California, Berkeley |
| 2003 |
David S. Hogness, Stanford University School of Medicine |
| 2002 |
Ira Herskowitz, University of California, San Francisco |
| 2001 |
Yasuji Oshima, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan |
| 2000 |
Evelyn M. Witkin, Rutgers University |
| 1999 |
Salome Waelsch, Albert Einstein College of Medicine |
| 1998 |
Norman H. Horowitz, California Institute of Technology |
| 1997 |
Oliver E. Nelson, University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| 1996 |
Franklin W. Stahl, University of Oregon |
| 1995 |
Matthew Meselson, Harvard University |
| 1994 |
David D. Perkins, Stanford University |
| 1993 |
Ray D. Owen, California Institute of Technology |
| 1992 |
Edward H. Coe, Jr., University of Missouri |
| 1991 |
Armin Dale Kaiser, Stanford University |
| 1990 |
Charles Yanofsky, Stanford University |
| 1989 |
Dan L. Lindsley, University of California, San Diego |
| 1988 |
Norman H. Giles, University of Georgia |
| 1987 |
James F. Crow, University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| 1986 |
Seymour Benzer, California Institute of Technology |
| 1985 |
Herschel Roman, University of Washington |
| 1984 |
George W. Beadle, University of Chicago |
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R. Alexander Brink, University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| 1983 |
Edward B. Lewis, California Institute of Technology |
| 1982 |
Sewall Wright, University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| 1981 |
Barbara McClintock, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory |
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Marcus M. Rhoades, Indiana University |
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