Sterling Howard Emerson Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Harriett Lyle

Interview Sessions from 1979
  • March 31, 1979
  • April 6, 1979

Abstract

An interview in three sessions, in March and April 1979, with Sterling Howard Emerson, professor of genetics, emeritus, in the Division of Biology. Dr. Emerson came to Caltech in 1928 as an assistant professor in the division, newly established under Thomas Hunt Morgan. He discusses his youth in Lincoln, Nebraska, and attendance at Cornell (BS, 1922), where his father, horticulturalist Rollins A. Emerson, taught plant genetics. Graduate work at the University of Michigan (PhD 1928). He recalls the early days of genetics after the rediscovery of Mendelism: meeting Columbia geneticists Morgan, A. H. Sturtevant, Calvin Bridges; H. J. Muller at Cold Spring Harbor (summer 1921); recruitment of Caltech’s biologists under Morgan; the Biology Council (1942-1946) running the division after Morgan’s retirement; the advent of George Beadle; his work with the AEC’s Division of Biology and Medicine (1955-1957); Morgan’s relationship with Caltech head R. A. Millikan; interaction with Linus Pauling. Memories of Sturtevant, Frits Went, Ernest Anderson, Robert Emerson, Henry Borsook, Albert Tyler, James Bonner, Norman Horowitz, C. A. G. Wiersma, A. J. Haagen-Smit, Roger Sperry. Discussion of his own work, chiefly on genetic recombination and adaptive changes in Oenothera and Neurospora.

Archival record in collection guide

PDF version of transcript [0.47 MB]

Preferred Citation

Sterling Howard Emerson Oral History Interview, interviewed by Harriett Lyle, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, March 31, 1979, April 6, 1979, http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Emerson_S.

Note to Readers

Oral history interviews provide valuable first-hand testimony of the past. The views and opinions expressed in them are those of the interviewees, who describe events based on their own recollections and from their own perspective. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Caltech Archives and Special Collections or of the California Institute of Technology.