Nobel Prize-winning scientist Thomas Hunt Morgan was born in Lexington

Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history — some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.

Thomas Hunt Morgan, a Nobel prize winning scientist, was born in Lexington after the start of the Civil War.

Morgan was the great-grandson of John Wesley Hunt — one of the first millionaires west of the Allegheny Mountains — and of Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star Spangled Banner.”

From an early age, he had an interest in science. At 16, Morgan attended the State College of Kentucky (now the University of Kentucky) in its preparatory department, studying science. In 1886, he graduated with a bachelor of science degree as valedictorian of his class.

After working with the U.S. Geological Survey and attending a summer at the Marine Biology School in Massachusetts, Morgan began graduate studies in zoology at Johns Hopkins University. Later, he returned to the State College of Kentucky in 1888 for his master of science.

After graduation, the school offered Morgan a job as a professor, but he chose to stay at Johns Hopkins. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1890, he began to study the genetic characteristics of fruit flies. His work proved that genes are carried on chromosomes and are the basis of heredity.

This discovery was the basis of the science of genetics. For his discoveries, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933.

Morgan taught at Bryn Mawr College until 1904, when he left to become a professor at Columbia University. He remained there until 1928, when he was appointed a professor of biology and Director of the G. Kerckhoff Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena.

Morgan retired from Caltech in 1942 and became a professor and chairman emeritus. Even in retirement, Morgan kept offices across the street and continued to do laboratory work.

In 1945, at the age of 79, he had a heart attack and died.

In his life, he wrote 22 books and 370 scientific papers. The division of biology at CalTech, which he helped establish, has produced seven Nobel Prize winners.

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