Elliot Meyerowitz

Elliot Meyerowitz (born May 22, 1951) is an American biologist.

He is George W. Beadle Professor of Biology, Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, he served as Chair of the Biology Division from 2000 to 2010.

He was appointed as Inaugural Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and elected into a Professorship in the University, and a Professorial Fellowship at Trinity College, with effect from 1 January 2011, while on leave from the California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Meyerowitz earned his A.B. from Columbia University, and M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Biology from Yale University. He joined the Caltech faculty after a postdoctoral period at the Biochemistry Department of the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Dr. Meyerowitz was a Drosophila melanogaster expert before he became a pioneer of Arabidopsis thaliana research. Dr. Meyerowitz is well known for his contributions on the genetic and molecular basis of plant hormone reception, and on the molecular mechanisms of pattern formation during flower and shoot apical meristem development. More recently, he has turned his attention to physical models of shoot morphogenesis. He has trained many of the current leaders in modern plant biology, including Steven Jacobsen, Marty Yanofsky and Detlef Weigel.

Dr. Meyerowitz is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1995), and the American Philosophical Society (1998), and is a foreign member of the French Académie des Sciences (2002) and the Royal Society (2004).

Among the awards he has received are the Genetics Society of America Medal in 1996, the International Prize for Biology from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 1997, the Richard Lounsbery Award from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1999, the Wilbur Cross Medal of Yale University in 2001, the Harrison Prize of the International Society of Developmental Biologists in 2005 and the Balzan Prize for "Plant Molecular Genetics" in 2006 (with Christopher Somerville).

He is a member of the editorial board of eight leading journals in genetics, genomics, and developmental biology, and has served as president of the International Society for Plant Molecular Biology (1995-7), the Genetics Society of America (1999) and the Society for Developmental Biology (2005-6).

Dr. Meyerowitz serves on the scientific advisory board of Mendel Biotechnology, Inc., a company that is collaborating with Monsanto and many other agricultural enterprises.^[1]