Scott F. Gilbert
American biologist
Scott Frederick Gilbert (born 1949) is an American evolutionary developmental biologist and historian of biology.
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.
Education
He obtained his B.A. in both biology and religion from Wesleyan University (1971). In 1976, he received his MA (history of science, under the aegis of Donna Haraway) and his PhD (biology, in the laboratory of Barbara Migeon) from the Johns Hopkins University. His postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, pursued research on ribosome synthesis in the laboratory of Masayasu Nomura (1976–1978) and investigated developmental immunology in the laboratory of Robert Auerbach (1978–1980).
Academic career
Gilbert is the author of the textbook Developmental Biology (first edition, 1985, and now in its 13th edition, 2023) and has also co-authored (with David Epel) the textbook Ecological Developmental Biology (2009, 2015). He has been credited with helping initiate evolutionary developmental biology and ecological developmental biology as new biological disciplines.
Gilbert's early biological research includes documenting the first pyrimidine-initiated RNA transcripts, elucidating the mechanisms by which antibodies inactivate poliovirus, and studying the roles of paracrine factors in kidney and lung branching. After co-authoring an early paper in evolutionary developmental biology, he inaugurated a project on the development of turtle shells. With collaborator Judith Cebra-Thomas, Gilbert elucidated the roles of several paracrine factors involved in carapace formation and made the unexpected conclusion that the plastron was derived from trunk neural crest cells.
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