Edward B. Lewis

Edward B. Lewis, American Geneticist, winner of 1995 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Born May 20, 1918, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Lewis received a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1938 and a Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 1942. After serving as a meteorologist in the U.S. Army Air Force in World War II, Lewis joined the Caltech faculty as an instructor in 1946. In 1956 he was appointed Professor of Biology, and in 1966 the Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Biology. His Nobel Prize winning studies founded the field of developmental genetics and laid the groundwork for our current understanding of the universal, evolutionarily conserved strategies controlling animal development. His key publications in the fields of genetics, developmental biology, radiation and cancer are presented in the book Genes, Development and Cancer, released in 2004.