Profile

Scott Gilbert is the Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology (emeritus) at Swarthmore College and a Finland Distinguished Professor (emeritus) at the University of Helsinki. He received his MA in the history of science at the Johns Hopkins University and his PhD in biology from the same institution. His research concerns the development of evolutionarily novel structures  (involving such questions as how the turtle gets its shell) and how organisms of different species cooperate to construct a body. He has also written articles on the historiography of embryology and genetics; the use of embryos in the artwork of Klimt, Kahlo, and Rivera; and the identity of the bone that formed Eve. Scott lives with Anne Raunio in Portland, Oregon, and is the author of textbooks in developmental biology as well as the trade-book Fear, Wonder, and Science in the New Age of Reproductive Biotechnology.