In 1976, Foti Kafatos wrote about the climate in which biological research thrives:

“In creative laboratories, professors and students work side by side in research... They continuously exchange ideas, and no one is surprised that the most creative often come from twenty-year-olds. This climate is important because science is not a collection of information, but a way of thinking.”

It was as if the great late biologist wanted to describe the atmosphere of his small laboratory at Columbia, where, in the early 20th century, an inspired professor, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and his three twenty-year-old students, H. Muller, A. Sturtevant, and C. Bridges, laid the foundations of Genetics in the form we know today.

The story of this laboratory, the “room with the flies,” is told in the book you hold in your hands. It is a moving story, as it encapsulates the spirit of curiosity and collaboration in the quest for knowledge, and yet it is also grand. What happened was not only revolutionary for Genetics and the way research is organized. They created a “school” with nearly a dozen Nobel prizes, awarded to students of Morgan or the students of his students.