Eric F. Wieschaus, the Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology and professor of molecular biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, was born in South Bend, Indiana, but raised in Birmingham, Alabama, during the tumultuous days of the civil rights movement. Since he attended a Catholic school on the other side of town, he had a front row seat to the racial tensions of the 1960s on the long bus ride to and from school. It seems likely that these experiences had a lasting impact that helped form the Eric we all know and admire, with his humility, compassion, and empathy. 

After graduating high school, Eric attended the University of Notre Dame, a logical extension of his parochial education in Birmingham. There, Eric was first introduced to fruit fly (Drosophila) genetics, but it was watching the behavior of cells in developing embryos that sparked his scientific imagination. Eric is the only graduate in the natural sciences to receive a Nobel Prize in Notre Dame’s 180-year history. 

After Notre Dame, Eric attended graduate school at Yale University, where he worked with newly hired associate professor Walter Gehring. Gehring embodied an area of scholarship that was distinctly European, the interface between classical genetics and developmental biology (Gehring obtained his Ph.D . from Ernst Hadorn, an intellectual descendant of another Nobel laureate, the German embryologist Hans Spemann). Eric also came under the influence of Don Poulson, one of the (then) few experts on Drosophila embryology. He was therefore poised to transform our understanding of development, and a fortuitous event iced the cake. During his graduate studies in New Haven, Gehring relocated his lab to the newly created Biozentrum at the University of Basel. This move to Switzerland had a huge impact on Eric’s research trajectory and personal life. There he met his future research collaborator, Christiane (Janni) Nüsslein-Volhard, and wife, Trudi Schüpbach. Trudi also later became a professor in Princeton’s Department of Molecular Biology. 

After obtaining his Ph.D ., Eric did a brief postdoctoral s tint with Rolf Nöthiger in Zurich, and then took an independent position at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, where Nüsslein-Volhard had also recently landed. Together, Eric and Janni transformed the field of developmental biology by identifying most of the genes that establish the blueprint of the Drosophila embryo. The list of genes identified in the Nusslein-Volhard and Wieschaus screen is breathtaking, and include household favorites such as hedgehog, patch, wingless, and frizzled. It is one of the major revelations in modern biology that the same genes used to pattern the Drosophila embryo are also used by other animal groups, including humans. The work represents one of the most successful research collaborations in the modern era, in some ways akin to Watson and Crick. 

After Heidelberg, Eric and Trudi moved to Princeton, where he worked his way up the academic ranks. The period between his arrival in Princeton in 1982 and the awarding of the Nobel Prize in 1995 was quite a ride. Eric and the members of his research team systematically dissected the different genes controlling segment polarity during embryogenesis. This research provided keen insights into important cell signaling pathways, such as wingless and hedgehog. Not only do these pathways also control a variety of developmental processes in vertebrates, they also have been shown to run amok in different diseases such as cancer. Indeed, inhibition of hedgehog signaling is used to treat skin cancer. Not one to rest on his laurels, Eric continued to open up new areas of research at the interface of cell biology and biophysics and made a number of important discoveries on the mechanisms underlying complex developmental processes, including the onset of zygotic transcription, gastrulation, cell intercalation, and extension. 

If you want to find Eric, your best bet is to go to his lab and look in the vicinity of his fly stocks, research bench, or microscopes. Donning his signature flannel shirt bespotted by the bleach used to dissolve Drosophila eggshells, Eric continues to wax poetic about his latest discoveries. He has retained a deep curiosity about nature and the infectious enthusiasm of an undergraduate. Eric is the heart and soul of the developmental biology enterprise at Princeton and we look forward to seeing him on campus for many years following his “retirement.” 

Written by members of the Department of Molecular Biology faculty.