Scott Gilbert

Scott F. Gilbert is Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College where he teaches developmental genetics, embryology, and the history and critiques of biology. He received his B.A. in both biology and religion from Wesleyan University, and he earned his PhD in biology from the pediatric genetics laboratory of Dr. Barbara Migeon at the Johns Hopkins University. His M.A. in the history of science, also from The Johns Hopkins University, was done under the supervision of Dr. Donna Haraway. He pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin in the laboratories of Dr. Masayasu Nomura and Dr. Robert Auerbach. 

Dr. Gilbert is currently on the Board of the Directors of the International Society for Differentiation and is a fellow of the AAAS. He also serves on the education committee of the Society for Developmental Biology. He has written the textbook Developmental Biology (presently in its sixth edition), as well as editing A Conceptual History of Embryology and (along with his wife, Anne M. Raunio) Embryology: Constructing the Organism. He has received several awards, including the Medal of François I from the Collège de France, the Dwight J. Ingle Memorial Writing Award, the Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award, an honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki, and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Grant. His present research is in evolutionary developmental biology, focusing on that most interesting of topics--how the turtle forms its shell. Dr. Gilbert continues to write both in developmental biology and in the history and philosophy of biology, and he has recently claimed to have identified the bone from which Eve was created.