Columbia University

Columbia University collected an extraordinary group in the Biology Department in the 1920s.  Edmund Beecher Wilson, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and the students and associates who joined them made up a dynamic, creative, and fascinating community. People wandered into Morgan’s lab to get bananas (used as food for the Drosophila Morgan was studying) and talked about ideas and experiments.  The Sturtevants, Lancefields, and many others made up the group of friends who visited each other, had picnics together, attended each others’ weddings, and made up the life of science and families.  Huettner’s photographs capture the community at work and play at Columbia and the Marine Biological Laboratory, where they went for summer research and fun.