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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

The ITS2 Database
Published on: March 12, 2012
Timeline: Hermann Joseph Muller, evolutionist
1Genetics Laboratory, 425G Henry Mall, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA. jfcrow@wisc.edu
Abstract:
This essay is dedicated to the proposition that Hermann Joseph Muller, widely regarded as the greatest geneticist of the first half-century of the subject, was also one of the greatest evolutionists of this period. His Nobel Prize-winning work, which showed that radiation increases the mutation rate, is in every genetics textbook, and his prescient ideas have influenced almost every aspect of the discipline. Here I emphasize his less well-known contribution to the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution.
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