KML History
The distinguished biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan was recruited to Caltech in 1927 to establish a new Division of Biology. He joined the Caltech faculty in 1928, moving from Columbia University where he had spent much of his career. Morgan was most famous for his work in heredity, working with the fruit fly as a model organism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 "for his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity." However, he also had a longstanding interest in marine biology. Beginning in 1890, he spent nearly every summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, studying ascidians and other marine organisms. He was instrumental in the acquisition and establishment of a marine laboratory for Caltech, where he would spend many happy weekends with his students, making important advances in the new field of developmental biology.
The Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory (KML) is located near the entrance to the harbor in Corona del Mar, on the east side of Newport Bay, about 50 miles from Pasadena. It was purchased in 1929 from the Balboa Palisades Club, which had constructed and used the building as a boat and club house. Caltech chemistry professors Alfred A. Noyes and Ernest H. Swift, who were members of the club, were instrumental in arranging the sale, paid for with funds given to the Institute by William G. Kerckhoff, a noted Los Angeles businessman.
KML is one of the oldest marine laboratories in the United States. T. H. Morgan worked at the lab from its establishment in 1930 until his death in 1945. From 1962 until his passing in 2002, Prof. Wheeler J. North conducted pioneering studies on the ecology of the California kelp forests while based at this laboratory. During the 1990s and 2000s investigators included Prof. Eric Davidson and his group, who studied the biology and genetics of the purple sea urchin, helping to establish it as a key model organism in developmental biology. Today KML is led by Prof. Victoria Orphan (James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science and Geobiology) with goals to see the facility evolve and continue to be a resource to marine science and the community as we approach its 100th anniversary. Check out current research at the lab here.
