George Harrison Shull was a botanist. He was a botanical investigator at the Carnegie Institution of Washington from 1904 to 1915 and taught botany and genetics at Princeton University from 1915 to 1942.

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 (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 124: 133-153. 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.

Physical description

6 linear feet.

Provenance

Presented by the Carnegie Institution of Washington and accessioned, 07/27/1965 (1965 1476ms). 2 notebooks presented by Herbert P. Riley and accessioned, 03/08/1966 (1966 334ms). 40 letters to HPR presented by Herbert P. Riley and accessioned, 1969 (1969 320ms).

Processing information

Index incomplete.

Related material

There are 90 letters to or from G. H. Shull in the Blakeslee Papers (B B585), 561 in the Davenport Papers (B D27), 36 in the Demerec Papers (B D394), 72 in the Jennings Papers (B J44), and 44 in the Stern Papers (Ms. Coll. 5).

Genetics Note

This collection contains materials which relate to the history of genetics.

• Carnegie Institution of Washington

• Notebooks.
• Reports.

• Burbank, Luther, 1849-1926
• MacDowell, E. Carleton (Edwin Carleton), 1887-1973
• Riley, Herbert Parkes
• Shull, George Harrison, 1874-1954

• Botany.
• Flowers.
• Genetics.
• Plant breeding -- California
• Plant genetics.
• Plants.