Lewis Stadler

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Lewis John Stadler (July 6, 1896 - May 12, 1954) was an American geneticist. His research focused on the mutagenic effects of different forms of radiation on economically important plants like maize and barley.

[edit] Background

Lewis John Stadler was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1896 and, after taking a B.S. in agriculture at the University of Florida (1917), earned the A.M. (1918), and Ph.D. (1922), at the University of Missouri. He joined the Department of Field Crops faculty in 1922, and remained at Missouri until 1954, acting as visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology (1940), and Yale University (1950). Beginning in 1930 he simultaneously held an appointment with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Academic honors included the presidencies of the Genetics Society of America, American Society of Naturalists, and Sigma Xi.

While Stadler spent almost all his academic life at the University of Missouri he was also involved in activities with a wider scope. During the 1930s Stadler was involved in efforts to bring European scientists to the U.S. to escape Nazism. In 1948 Stadler was appointed a delegate to the Eighth International Congress of Genetics, meeting in Stockholm. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, however, rejected his passport application and conducted a loyalty investigation; Stadler at first thought it was a State Department action.

Stadler married Cornelia Field Tuckerman in 1919, and they had six children: Maury Tuckerman, Henry Lewis, David Ross, John Brandeis, Eliot Tuckerman, and Joan.

Stadler's work in genetics concentrated upon the study of mutation in corn. He did much work on the effects of X-ray treatments, and did comparative studies of mutation caused by X-rays and by ultraviolet rays. His work earned him an international reputation.

He died of leukemia in 1954.

In his honor, the University of Missouri-Columbia holds the Stadler Genetics Symposium every two years [1]