New York Aquarium. Fish Genetics Laboratory. Office of Geneticist. Myron Gordon records

Myron Gordon began his affiliation with the New York Aquarium [NYA] in 1939 as a visiting researcher during the early years of his appointment at the American Museum of Natural History [AMNH]. It was during this time that he established what would become the Xiphophorus Genetic Stock Center, maintained first by Gordon and then by his student Klaus Kallman during the entirety of their tenure at NYA and its marine labs, and eventually transferred by Kallman to its current location at the University of Texas. Gordon joined the Aquarium’s staff as a Research Associate in Genetics in 1941 after the original Manhattan building of the NYA was closed and its parent organization, the New York Zoological Society, rented laboratory space for aquatic research at AMNH. In 1944--as part of the staff rearrangements following the resignation of NYA Director Charles M. Breder, who left to become AMNH’s Chairman of the Department of Fishes--Gordon became Assistant Curator at NYA while maintaining his AMNH position. (From the 1940s through the 1960s, NYA and AMNH staff were a close-knit group, with several staff members either holding dual appointments or moving back and forth from one institution to the other.)

By 1947 Gordon was the NYA’s Geneticist, in charge of the Fish Genetics Laboratory. Gordon’s research focused on the genetic aspects of and mechanisms for speciation, sex determination, and tumor development, with a particular interest in melanomas in platyfish and swordtails, the fishes that comprise the Xiphophorus genus (at the time they were considered two separate genera). While at the Aquarium, Gordon continued the collecting expeditions he had begun while a graduate student at Cornell University. These expeditions, which Gordon conducted from the late 1930s through the late 1950s, took him to Mexico and Central America to retrieve wild Xiphophorus stock free of the pedigree and hybridization uncertainties of the domestic stocks that supplied the pet trade of the era. At the same time, Gordon also held a teaching appointment at New York University and organized a series of conferences on the biology of normal and atypical pigment cell growth (what would later be recognized as the first four International Pigment Cell Conferences).

Gordon died suddenly in March, 1959, at the height of his output. In that same year James Atz, Donn Rosen, and Klaus Kallman all received their PhDs from NYU under Gordon’s mentorship. Rosen followed in Gordon’s footsteps at AMNH, chairing the Museum’s Department of Ichthyology from 1965 until 1975. Atz and Kallman took up Gordon’s research at the Aquarium, with Atz continuing his role as Associate Curator and Kallman succeeding Gordon at the Genetics Lab.

NYA Career Chronology

• 1939-1940 Visiting researcher
• 1941-1943 Research Associate in Genetics
• 1944-1946 Assistant Curator and Research Associate in Genetics
• 1947-1959 Geneticist

1939-1940

Visiting researcher

1941-1943

Research Associate in Genetics

1944-1946

Assistant Curator and Research Associate in Genetics

1947-1959

Geneticist