Hermann Muller was born in New York City, the son of Frances and Hermann Joseph Muller, Sr. He received a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in 1916 and held positions at Columbia University and the University of Texas. He worked in the USSR for many years where he supervised a large and productive lab, and organized work on medical genetics. Most of his work involved further explorations of genetics and radiation. He also worked as an adviser in the Manhattan Project as well as a study of the mutational effects of radar.
In 1945 he became a professor of zoology at Indiana University. In 1946, Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that mutations can be induced by X-rays. Muller was awarded the Linnean Society of London’s Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1958 and the Kimber Genetics Award of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1955. He served as president of the American Humanist Association from 1956 to 1958.