Peter Anthony Lawrence facts for kids

Peter Anthony Lawrence FRS (born June 23, 1941) is a British scientist who studies how living things grow and develop. He works at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the Zoology Department of the University of Cambridge. From 1969 to 2006, he was a staff scientist for the Medical Research Council.

Learning and Early Studies

Peter Lawrence went to Wennington School in Wetherby. Later, he studied at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He earned his doctorate while working with Vincent Wigglesworth. His early research focused on the milkweed bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus).

Discovering How Animals Form

Peter Lawrence's main goal has been to understand how animals get their shapes and patterns. Think about a butterfly's wing or a human fingerprint. How does the body know where to put each part?

The Role of Morphogens in Development

He is a strong supporter of the idea that cells develop based on chemical signals called morphogens. Imagine a special chemical that spreads out, creating a gradient. Cells in different parts of this gradient receive different amounts of the chemical. This tells them what to become and where to go. This mechanism helps create patterns of cells in a developing animal.

Understanding Body Compartments

Working with another scientist, Ginés Morata, Lawrence helped develop the "compartment theory." This idea suggests that groups of cells work together to build specific parts of an animal's body. These parts are like separate "compartments."

As an animal grows, a special "selector gene" can turn on in some of these cell groups. This divides a compartment into two smaller, connected compartments. Much of the proof for this theory comes from studying the wings of the Drosophila fly, also known as the fruit fly.

Studying Fruit Fly Development

For many years, Peter Lawrence has worked with Gary Struhl to study the adult abdomen of the Drosophila fly. They want to understand how the skin patterns are made. They particularly look at planar polarity, which is how cells line up in a specific direction. They also study cell affinity, which is how cells stick together in certain ways.

Books and Writings

In 1992, Lawrence wrote a book called The Making of a Fly. This book explains how the body plans of flies, and even more complex animals like humans, are put together.

An interesting story about the book happened in 2011. Two online booksellers accidentally set the price of the book extremely high on Amazon.com's used book market. The prices went up to over $23 million before the mistake was fixed!

Lawrence has also written about the rules and good practices in science. He also helped write a tribute to the famous scientist Francis Crick for Current Biology magazine.

Awards and Special Recognition

Peter Lawrence has received many important awards for his scientific work:

• He became a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).
• In 1983, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a very high honor for scientists in the UK.
• He was given the Darwin Medal.
• He received the Prince of Asturias Prize for scientific research.
• In 2000, he was elected as a Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Family Life

Peter Lawrence married Birgitta Haraldson in 1971. She is a clinical psychologist and an expert on autism.