Wieschaus, << WEESH hows, >> Eric Francis (1947-…), is an American biologist whose research helped explain how genes control the earliest development of embryos. For this work, Wieschaus shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with two other biologists, Edward B. Lewis of the United States and Christiane Nusslein-Volhard of Germany.
Wieschaus was born in South Bend, Indiana. He received a B.S. degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1969 and a Ph. D degree in biology from Yale University in 1974.
After completing his education, Wieschaus went to Europe to do research. He held a research fellowship in zoology at the University of Zurich in Switzerland from 1975 to 1978. In 1978, he began the work that would eventually win the Nobel Prize. That year, he joined Nusslein-Volhard studying fruit fly genes at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. Building on earlier work done by Edward B. Lewis of the United States, the two researchers determined which genes were important to normal development and which were essential. Their findings, the Nobel committee said, helped scientists understand the causes of human miscarriages and birth defects.
In 1981, Wieschaus returned to the United States and joined the faculty of Princeton University. He became a professor of biology there in 1987.
