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The story of the scientists who invented genetics and proved the theory of evolution
The Fly Room tells the story of Nobel Prize-winning biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan’s laboratory at Columbia University where, in the early twentieth century, he presided over a handful of students and a roomful of fruit flies who taught him that everything he thought was true was wrong, and everything he thought was wrong was right.
Before Morgan’s time, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was regarded as a subject unworthy of serious scientific study—not something you would hear discussed in a laboratory. In its place rose the dark specter of eugenics, with its attendant sinister ambitions to create a superior human race.
But Morgan and his students, by experimenting with and breeding fruit flies, invented genetics, which would eventually lead to the refutation of the theory of eugenics and prove Darwin’s theory of evolution right. Meanwhile in Soviet Russia, a country convulsed by revolution, genetics came under attack, forcing researchers to seek refuge in the United States and discover for themselves the scientific breakthroughs taking place in Morgan’s laboratory.
Both a collective biography of the men and women who pioneered the field of genetics, as well as a history of how genetics was invented and proven to be the science of evolution, The Fly Room is a compelling read about a fascinating branch of science whose innovations benefit us to the present day.
— Luis A. Campos, Baker College Chair for the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation, Rice University
"This book offers an empathic, deeply personal reading of major achievements in human genetics based on the author’s extensive archival research. The breadth of historical material is impressive and so is the author’s knowledge of the existing scholarship on the history of science, genetics, Darwinism, and eugenics, to which he too has contributed significantly for the past two decades."
— Marius Turda, Oxford Brookes University
"The Fly Room offers a dynamic and collective biography of several key architects of the Modern Synthesis, set against a scientific and political backdrop shaped by the rise of the 'reform' eugenics movement. The book examines Darwinism, eugenics, and 'Lysenkoism' not as isolated issues but as interconnected facets of the broader nature/nurture debate of the 20th century."
— Francesco Cassata, University of Genoa
"Some of the most important discoveries in modern biology sprung from the work of Thomas Hunt Morgan and his band of students and researchers who developed the fruit fly into the genetic workhorse that it remains today. This is the first truly complete story of the crucial events that took place between Darwin and the discovery of DNA, told as a most engaging history full of remarkable characters who have too long remained in the shadows."
— Stuart Firestein, Professor of Biological Sciences, Columbia University