A Guide to the Genetics Collections at the APS
Major Collections
George Harrison Shull Papers
b. April 15,1874, Clark County, Ohio. d.Sept. 28, 1954, Princeton, N.I. Father, farmer and lay minister, German Baptist. Mother, Catherine Ryman Shull. m. (1) Ella Amanda Hollar, July 8, 1906; one daughter. (2) Mary Julia Nicholl, Aug. 26, 1909; six children.
Formal schooling scanty. Antioch C., B.S., 1901. Bot. asst., U.S. Natl. Herbarium, 1901. Botanist, Bur. Plant Industry, 1902-04. U. Chicago, Ph.D., 1904. Carnegie Inst. Wash. Lab. Exper. Evolution, Cold Spring Harbor, scientist, 1904-15. Princeton U., professor of botany and genetics, 1915-42.
BIOG.
Paul C. Mangelsdorf, Genetics 33 (1948). H.P. Riley, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 82:243-48 (1955); J. Hered. 46:64-66 (1955). Bentley Glass, Dict. Amer. Biog; suppl. 5, 628-29 (1977). Time, Oct. 11, 1954. Nature, Jan. 8, 1955.
BIBLIOG.
165 scientific papers. Bibliography not published.
EDITORIAL OFFICES.
Founder and managing editor of Genetics, 1916-25.
THE SHULL PAPERS.
Twelve boxes of materials all relating to the work of G.H. Shull as a scientist commissioned by the Carnegie Institution of Washington to collaborate with their grantee, Luther Burbank, with the aim of analyzing Burbank's data on plant breeding and hybridization and preparing it for publication in suitable scientific journals. There are files for each plant genus involved in Burbank's work. These files contain notes, calculations, clippings from newspapers or periodicals, and an unpublished manuscript of Shull's report to the Carnegie Institution.
G. H. Shull worked on hereditary variation in many different plants during his career: the evening primrose (Oenothera), the shepherd's purse (Bursa), Indian corn (Zea), bean (Phaseolus), pink (Lychnis), foxglove (Digitalis), sunflower (Helianthus), tomato (Lycopelricon), poppy (Papaver), potato (Solanum), and tobacco (Nicotiana). He is chiefly noted, however, for one major achievement that laid the foundation for the development of hybrid corn and the other hybrids responsible in the latter part of the twentieth century for the "Green Revolution." This was probably the single most important agricultural advance of the century. It has been estimated that during World War II, when hybrid corn was first cultivated, it increased corn yields in the United States by 20 per cent -- a gain of 1.8 billion bushels worth $2 billion dollars, enough to pay for the Manhattan Project, and also enabling the United States to ship vast quantities of food abroad after the war, and so to prevent famine and pestilence.
Although many others were involved in the development of hybrid corn, Shull's contribution was the basic one. In breeding begun in 1905 at Cold Spring Harbor, he applied the principles of Mendelian heredity to analyze the inheritance of quantitative characters in corn (maize), especially the number of rows of kernels per ear. He self-pollinated the corn in order to produce a number of pure, inbred lines that differed in the average number of rows. These lines, as inbreeding continued, declined in vigor and productivity. When, however, they were crossed, the hybrids were not only extremely uniform but also highly vigorous and productive. They were definitely superior to the original open-pollinated strains with which Shull had started his work. Shull's papers of 1908 and 1909 describing this series of experiments in detail laid the basis for hybrid corn breeding with its higher yields, greater uniformity, more exact specializations to fit particular climates and soils, and desirable chemical content and nutritive qualities. Paul C. Mangelsdorf has said: "Certainly it was one of the most remarkable achievements of our time in the field of applied biology. Shull's idea of producing and maintaining otherwise useless inbred strains of maize solely for the purpose of utilizing the increased vigor and uniformity resulting from their hybridization was revolutionary as a method of corn breeding. It is still the basic principle which underlies almost the entire hybrid corn enterprise." In December, 1905, the Carnegie Institution of Washington selected G.H. Shull as the geneticist to work with the famed plant breeder Luther Burbank, to whom the Carnegie Institution had made a handsome grant of funds, in order to prepare "a scientific account of the ways, means, methods, and results of Mr. Burbank's work... " (President Woodward's first annual report, in the Yearbook of 1905). Shull was to begin in March, 1906, was to return to Cold Spring Harbor to carry on his own work from June through September, and then return to Santa Rosa to collaborate with Luther Burbank as long as necessary.
In July of 1906 Shull made a preliminary report to the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The unpublished manuscript of this report, a remarkably perceptive document commenting fully on Burbank's methods and results, and expressing also the great difficulties experienced by the young geneticist in trying to work with the opinionated elder plant breeder, remained unpublished in the Shull Papers, until unearthed and published by Bentley Glass (Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., 124:133-53. 1980). As the sequel showed, nothing much ever came of the project, although Shull spent a number of additional months at Santa Rosa in the effort to complete his work. It dragged on until 1914, when Shull finally used the outbreak of World War I as an excuse to terminate the project. The Shull Papers, in addition to the manuscript of the 1906 report, contain newspaper and magazine clippings and handwritten notes by Shull, arranged genus by genus, all relating to Burbank's extensive collections of wild species and varieties of plants and his hybridizations. There is really not very much.
Selected files
View the key to abbreviations
| Riley, H.P. (GS) | 32:1932-52 | PB, GP, ZG, HE, Princeton U., T, ED, ICG, EV, WWII, textbooks, terminology |
There are 90 letters to or from G.H. Shull in the Blakeslee Papers, 561 in the Davenport Papers, 36 in the Demerec Papers, 72 in the Jennings Papers, and 44 in the Stern Papers.