Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard was born on October 20, 1942, in Magdeburg, Germany. The daughter of Rolf Volhard, an architect, and Brigitte (Hass) Volhard, a musician and painter. And while few women of her generation chose scientific careers, Nüsslein-Volhard found that being female in a male-dominated field presented little in the way of an obstacle to her studies. She received degrees in biology, physics, and chemistry from Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University in 1964 and a diploma in biochemistry from Eberhard-Karls University in 1968. In 1973 she earned a Ph.D. in biology and genetics from the University of Tübingen. Nüsslein-Volhard was married for a short time as a young woman and never had any children. She decided to keep her husband's last name because it was already associated with her developing scientific career.

In the late 1970s Nüsslein-Volhard finished post-doctoral fellowships in Basel, Switzerland, and Freiburg, Germany, and...