Professor Profiles: Eric Wieschaus

Professor Eric Wieschaus is not the standoffish scientist you might expect of someone who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work identifying the genes that shape the formation of embryos in fruit flies. Full of color and passion, he is as content to rhapsodize about flies as he is to explain the minutiae of embryonic development and its larger implications for biological research as a whole.

Since winning the top award in his field nearly 20 years ago, Wieschaus has enjoyed the simplicity of a life spent happily immersed in research and teaching as one of the most established academics of his field. Yet Wieschaus explains that he was not always drawn to the study of biology.

“When I was young, I wanted to be an artist. I was good in school, but my family aren’t scientists, so I didn’t know that you could be a scientist,” Wieschaus said. “I didn’t know what it was like.”

Despite this, a part-time job washing fly bottles in a lab in college led Wieschaus to realize that science was a more exciting and rich field than he had imagined it to be. He found that he not only enjoyed being in a lab but also that his budding interest in science did not have to preclude his love of art. Even today, he posits that his background as an art aficionado helped bolster his career as a scientist.

“A lot of the things that make you an artist are your ability to see things or look at things and that’s also the case for me, at least, in biology,” said Wieschaus. “A lot of what I’ve done is really dependent on my ability to look at something and intuit what’s going on ... I can look at embryos and see specific things and understand motion in terms of flow and force and things like that.”

As the Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology at the University, Wieschaus is still honing his skills as a scientist. While he has continued his work in genetics and embryonic development, he has also come to enjoy teaching molecular biology on an varying levels. He particularly appreciates the opportunity to teach underclassmen using a curriculum based on what he has found most important in his scientific research and experiences. Meanwhile, he has also found that his students push him to continue improving as a scientist.

“Science isn’t this ivory tower thing where you’re off by yourself — it’s dependent on communication,” Wieschaus said. “I’m probably a better scientific communicator and a better thinker because I teach.”