| 1 | Name: | Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard | |
| Institution: | Max Planck Institute | ||
| Year Elected: | 1995 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 202. Cellular and Developmental Biology | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1942 | ||
German biologist Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard is a widely acknowledged authority on embryonic limb regeneration, development and induction. She was awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1991 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995, the latter for her work with Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis on the genetic control of embryonic development. With Wieschaus, she developed a spectacularly successful large-scale mutagenesis project that illuminated the development program of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. At the time of these experiments, molecular biology was mostly based on small-scale experiments that demonstrated principles or examples of possibly general significance. These experiments were not only distinguished by their sheer scale (with the methods available at the time, they involved an enormous workload), but more importantly by their significance for organisms other than fruit flies. It was later found that many of the genes identified here had homologues in other species. These findings have also led to important realizations about evolution, and they greatly increased understanding of the regulation of transcription and cell fate during development. Since 1985 Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard has been Director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany. She received her Ph.D. from Tübingen University in 1973 and also currently leads the university's Genetics Department. In 1986 she received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. | |||