J. Howard Mueller was the son of a Unitarian clergyman and grew up in Illinois. He studied biology at Illinois Wesleyan University with a bachelor's degree in 1912. He was then a chemistry instructor at the University of Louisville for two years before receiving his master's degree in 1914. He became interested in pathology and bacteriology and in 1914 attended a summer course at the Medical Faculty of Columbia University. He stayed there for further studies after receiving a scholarship and received in 1916 his doctorate Ph.D. in pathology. He then became an assistant pathologist at the New York Presbyterian Hospital. In 1917 he was a volunteer at the front in France with a medical unit and was involved in empirical proof of the transmission of trench fever by lice. In 1919 he was discharged as a lieutenant and became an instructor in bacteriology under Hans Zinsser at Columbia University.[3] (The academic position to which Mueller was appointed was formerly held by Joseph Gardner Hopkins MD (1882–1951), who was promoted.[4]) At Columbia, Mueller did research on the requirements for the growth of cultures of pathogenic bacteria.[3] He wrote:
Perhaps the most important results to which success in such a piece of work might lead, are the applications of the findings to problems of more general biological importance, particularly to those of animal metabolism. For, whatever may prove to be the nature of these substances which cause growth of bacteria, they are largely or entirely components of animal tissue, and it is probable that they are either needed also by the animal body and supplied by plant or other sources, or else are synthesized by the animal itself to fill some metabolic requirement. When it is possible to catalogue the substances required by pathogenic bacteria for growth, it will probably be found that most of them are either required by, or important in, animal metabolism, and while many of them will surely be compounds at present familiar to the physiological chemist, it is equally probable that some will be new, or at least of hitherto unrecognized importance.[3]
He was the first to succeed in isolating and characterizing methionine, which certain streptococci needed for their growth.[5][6] In 1923 when Zinnser was appointed as the chair of the department of bacteriology and immunology at Harvard Medical School, Mueller followed him and became an assistant professor there. However, Mueller had to interrupt his work on bacterial metabolism, including work on Rous sarcoma virus with a dispute over William Ewart Gye's theory.[7] In 1930 Mueller began his studies on the nutritional requirements of the diphtheria bacillus.[3]
Within a few years the Mueller laboratory had identified which amino acids were essential for growth of the diphtheria bacillus and had made the important observation that different strains of the same bacillus varied widely in their amino acid requirements.[3]
His work with the diphtheria pathogen was also of practical importance for the development of vaccines against diphtheria (by optimizing the bacterial cultures). From the early 1940s, he turned to research on the tetanus pathogen. After Zinsser's death in 1940, Mueller became head of the bacteriology department at Harvard. He continued to do research. Ge arrived several hours early at his laboratory and experimented until his co-workers arrived in the morning, then gave the research to his assistant Pauline Miller so that could devoted himself to administrative work. In addition to basic research, he always aimed at medical applications to fight infectious agents.[3]
In 1944 when Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty published their research on bacterial DNA, Mueller understood the meaning and importance of their results and published his viewpoint in 1945 in a review article.[3]
Mueller, J. H.; Hinton, J. (1941). "A Protein-Free Medium for Primary Isolation of the Gonococcus and Meningococcus". Experimental Biology and Medicine. 48: 330–333. doi:10.3181/00379727-48-13311. S2CID84378770.
Mueller, J. H. "Nutrition of the single cell: Its application to medical bacteriology". Harvey Lecture Series. 39, 1943/44: 143–161. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) (See Harvey Society.)
^Mueller, J. H.; Hinton, J. (October 1, 1941). "A Protein-Free Medium for Primary Isolation of the Gonococcus and Meningococcus". Experimental Biology and Medicine. 48 (1): 330–333. doi:10.3181/00379727-48-13311. S2CID84378770.
^ abcdefghPappenheimer Jr., A. M. (1987). "John Howard Mueller". Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences. 57. Washington, DC: National Academy Press: 307–321. (See pages 314-321 for a bibliography of Mueller's publications.)
