Abstract of the Commemorative lecture
The Journey of a Biologist
In this commemorative lecture I present my personal life history, my philosophy and my outlook on life. Starting with the history of the Gehring family which goes back to the year 1084, I describe briefly my grandfather who was a farmer in Rüdlingen, a beautiful small village on the Rhine River in the north of Switzerland, where my father was born in 1903. My father, Jakob Gehring, studied engineering in Zurich and emigrated to France, where he met my mother who is from an Alsatian family. I was born in 1939 in Zurich at the dawn of the Second World War. I spent a happy childhood with my two sisters and my cousin who was like a brother to me. In primary school I had an excellent teacher who was very important for my further development. Gymnasium (High School) was highly competitive, but it sharpened our intellect. As a boy I was drawn into biology by watching the metamorphosis of a butterfly. I studied zoology at the University of Zurich with Ernst Hadorn, one of the leading developmental biologists of his time. In order to learn molecular biology I moved to Alan Garen's laboratory at Yale University in the United States. In 1964 I married Elisabeth Lott and our older son Stephan was born in Zurich, the younger one, Thomas in New Haven. In 1969 I started my own laboratory at Yale with Erie Wieschaus as my first graduate student. In 1972 we moved back to Switzerland where I became Professor at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. I have largely concentrated my work on the little fruit fly Drosophila and the genetic control of its development. Together with my collaborators I have discovered the homeobox and identified the universal master control gene for the development and evolution of the eyes. I try to describe the motivations and philosophy behind my scientific work, and how scientific discoveries are made.
