Lewis Wolpert

Lewis Wolpert CBE FRS FRSL FMedSci
Born	19 October 1929 Johannesburg, South Africa
Died	28 January 2021 (aged 91)
Nationality	British
Education	University of Witwatersrand (BSc) Imperial College London King's College London (PhD)
Known for	Positional-value concept in biological development French flag model
Children	Daniel Mark Wolpert, Miranda Wolpert
Awards	Hamburger prize for education – American Soc.Dev.Biol. Michael Faraday Prize (2000) Royal Medal (2018)
Scientific career
Fields	Developmental biology
Institutions	University College London (Emeritus Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology)
Doctoral students	Jim Smith[1][2]
Website	www.ucl.ac.uk/cdb/research/wolpert

Lewis Wolpert CBE FRS FRSL FMedSci (19 October 1929 – 28 January 2021) was a South African-born British developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster. Wolpert popularized his French flag model of embryonic development, using the colours of the French flag as a visual aid to explain how embryonic cells interpret genetic code for expressing characteristics of living organisms and explaining how signalling between cells early in morphogenesis could inform cells with the same genetic regulatory network of their position and role.

He wrote several science books, including: Triumph of the Embryo (1991), Malignant Sadness (1999), Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: the Evolutionary Origins of Belief (2006), and How We Live And Why We Die: The Secret Lives of Cells (2009).