Thomas Robert Soderstrom Thomas Robert Soderstrom Thomas Robert Soderstrom (9 January 1936 Chicago – 1 September 1987) was an American agrostologist His special field of study was the grass family Gramineae or Poaceae. He was Curator of Grasses at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC for some twenty years. In 1957 Soderstrom graduated from the University of Illinois with a BSc in Biology, and enrolled at the graduate school at Yale University, earning a Master of Science in Biology the following year and a PhD in Botany 1961. He joined the National Museum in 1960 as assistant curator. He became
History of model organisms respective work on natural selection and the genetics of heredity. These early works in finding standards to compare organisms against continued into the 20th century as the first model organisms were brought into laboratories. Beginning in the early 1900s "Drosophila" entered the research laboratories and opened up the doors for other model organisms like Tobacco mosaic virus, E. coli, C57BL/6 (lab mice), etc. These organisms have led to many advances in the past century. Some of the first work with what would be considered model organisms started because Gregor Johann Mendel felt that the views of Darwin were insufficient in