Our community is terribly saddened by the loss of Lewis Wolpert, someone who contributed to our field a great deal. Here are just a few thoughts from current members of our committee.
We will commemorate Lewis’s illustrious career and contributions to our science and community in due course.
You can watch Lewis’s 2015 Waddington medal lecture here
“Lewis was one of my heroes. He was my PhD supervisor, Julian Lewis’ post-doc mentor, so I considered myself a grandson. He examined my PhD and was completely distracted throughout the viva because he’d just received a Fed Ex parcel with a juicy MS or antiquarian book that he wanted to look at….but when he did look at me and raise his glasses and ask me a question I felt like I was in the presence of royalty. He was a superstar in our field and a fantastically inspirational thinker and speaker for all of us in the Dev Biol community”.
-Paul Martin
Image credit: The British Library
“Lewis Wolpert had beautiful ideas and expressed them with elegant words. He inspired so many of us to become developmental biologists”.
-Sally Lowell
“I had the pleasure of meeting Lewis in the setting of my PhD Program annual symposium – he was a friend of the Portuguese scientific community. Having chosen a PhD on gastrulation, I amused myself by baffling others with his famous quote. I also read with great interest his scholarly book on depression, endlessly inquisitive and thought-provoking. He will forever remain in the consciousness of so many he had no idea about…”
– Rita Sousa-Nunes
“I remember being inspired by Lewis Wolpert’s beautiful textbook on developmental biology as an undergraduate student. This has led to a lifelong passion for development, for which I am exceptionally thankful”.