Eric Wieschaus, by studying the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, made important discoveries concerning genetic mechanisms of control of early embryonic development, For this research, Wieschaus, along with colleagues Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Edward B. Lewis received the 1995 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Wieschaus was born in South Bend, Indiana, but grew up in Alabama. He received his bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Notre Dame in 1969 and his doctorate from Yale in 1974. His doctoral dissertation involved using genetic methods to label the progeny (offspring) of single cells in fly embryos. He showed that even at the earliest cellular stages, cells were already determined to form specific regions of the body called segments.

Wieschaus began his Nobel-winning work in the latter part of the 1970s. The Alabama native spent three years with Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard in the European Molecular Biology Lab at the University...