Scott F. Gilbert is the Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology (emeritus) at Swarthmore College, where he has taught developmental genetics, embryology, and the history and critiques of biology. He is also a Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Helsinki. He received his B.A. in both biology and religion from Wesleyan University (1971), and he earned his PhD in biology from the pediatric genetics laboratory of Dr. Barbara Migeon at the Johns Hopkins University (1976). 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.
Scott currently has three co-authored books in print: (1) "Developmental Biology" (now in its eleventh edition), which is one of the most widely used textbook in the field; (2) the new textbook, "Ecological Developmental Biology," which is trying to help construct a new subdisclipine of biological science by bringing together aspects of embryology, medical physiology, ecology, and evolution, and (3) "Fear, Wonder, and Science in the New Age of Reproductive Biotechnology," a book for the general public concerning fertilization, early human development, infertility, and abortion.
Scott 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, honorary doctorates from the University of Helsinki (Finland) and the University of Tartu (Estonia), and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Grant. In 2002, the Society for Developmental Biology awarded him its first Viktor Hamburger Prize for Excellence in Education, and in 2004, he was awarded the Kowalevsky Prize in Evolutionary Developmental Biology. He has been elected a fellow of the AAAS and the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists. He received the Burnhill Award from the American Reproductive Health Association in 2009, and in the last few years, he has presented the Burian-McNabb Lecture, Kurt Benirschke Lecture, and the Robert L. Brent Lecture.
In 1994, Scott established the first website for a textbook, and he is also the co-author of a digitally-based history of developmental of biology. He is funded by the National Science Foundation to work with undergraduates on that most interesting of topics-how the turtle forms its shell-and he continues to do research and write in both developmental biology and in the history and philosophy of biology. He is married to Dr. Anne Raunio and has three children. His hobbies playing piano in KNISH, one of Swarthmore's premier Klezmer bands.
