Elliot Meyerowitz facts for kids

Elliot Meyerowitz, born on May 22, 1951, is a famous American biologist. He is well-known for his important discoveries about how plants grow and develop. His research has helped us understand how flowers form and how plants respond to their environment.

Studying Plant Growth and Development

Early Studies and Research

Elliot Meyerowitz started his university studies at Columbia University. He earned his degree in biology in 1973. There, he helped study how nerves connect in fish brains.

Later, he went to Yale University for his Ph.D. He focused on how eyes and brains develop in fruit flies. These flies are called Drosophila melanogaster.

After Yale, he worked at Stanford University. He helped develop new ways to study genes. This was when gene cloning was just beginning.

Career at Caltech and Cambridge

Since 1980, Dr. Meyerowitz has been a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He even led the biology division there from 2000 to 2010.

For a few years, from 2011 to 2013, he also worked in England. He was the first director of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.

Discoveries in Plant Biology

Dr. Meyerowitz was first an expert on fruit flies. But he became a leader in studying a small plant called Arabidopsis thaliana. This plant is often used in science because it grows quickly.

He made big discoveries about how plant hormones work. Hormones are like chemical messengers in plants. He also studied how flowers and plant shoots develop. Shoots are the new parts of a plant that grow above ground.

He looked at how patterns form as plants grow. This includes how the different parts of a flower know where to grow. He also studied the meristem, which is where new plant cells are made.

More recently, he has been using physics to understand plant growth. He looks at how physical forces shape plants. Many top plant biologists today were once students in his lab.

Awards and Recognition

Dr. Meyerowitz has received many important awards for his work. These awards show how much his research has helped science.

Some of his major awards include:

• The Genetics Society of America Medal in 1996.
• The International Prize for Biology in 1997. This is a big award from Japan.
• The Richard Lounsbery Award in 1999.
• The Balzan Prize in 2006 for his work on plant genetics.
• The Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 2024.

He is also a member of several important science groups. These include the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is also a foreign member of the Royal Society in the UK.

Dr. Meyerowitz helps guide many science journals. He has also been the president of several science societies. These include the Genetics Society of America. He continues to advise new research centers today.

Related pages

• ABC model of flower development
• History of research on Arabidopsis thaliana