ABOVE: Lewis Wolpert in 2008
NEIL VARGESSON
Lewis Wolpert, an influential developmental biologist and prolific science communicator, died on January 28 at the age of 91. He was known for his findings on how cells in the developing embryo coordinate so that each plays the role needed in order for the organism to take shape.
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1929, Wolpert studied civil engineering as an undergraduate at the University of the Witwatersrand, and later went on to graduate school in soil mechanics at Imperial College London. “A friend told me that soil mechanics wasn’t very sexy and that some of my work could be relevant to the study of cell mechanics,” he recalled in an interview with The Scientist in 2011. So Wolpert switched to studying the mechanics of cell division at King’s College London, according to The Guardian, and later was promoted to a lecturer and reader ...
