Lilian Vaughan Morgan was an American experimental biologist who made seminal contributions to the genetics of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, although her work was obscured by the attention given her husband, Nobel laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan. Lilian Morgan published sixteen single-author papers between 1894 and 1947. Probably her most significant scientific contribution was the discovery of the attached-X chromosome and an entirely new pattern of inheritance in Drosophila in 1921. She also discovered the closed or ring-X chromosome in 1933. Both are important research tools today.
Lilian Vaughan Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, embryologist, and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries elucidating the role that the chromosome plays in heredity.
Morgan in 1891
In a typical Drosophila genetics experiment, male and female flies with known phenotypes are put in a jar to mate; females must be virgins. Eggs are laid in porridge which the larvae feed on; when the life cycle is complete, the progeny are scored for the inheritance of the trait of interest.
Morgan's illustration of crossing over, from his 1916 A Critique of the Theory of Evolution
