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Adult Life

In 1939, Edward B. Lewis arrived at Caltech and finished his Ph.D. within three years. Lewis enrolled in the U.S. Army Air Corps training program in meteorology in 1942 and later received his masters in the area a year later. As he left for military service in 1943, he was told by the university president Robert A. Millikan that he had a position as an instructor at Caltech when he returned. He served working mostly as a weather forecaster in Hawaii and Okinawa for four years. Lewis returned in 1946 and took his position at Caltech where his duties included helping in the laboratory for an introductory genetics course. He was promoted in 1956 to a professor and became the Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Biology in 1966.

Family Life

In 1946, Edward B. Lewis met Pamela Harrah, an intelligent, charming, and alert woman. She was an accomplished artist, but also shared Lewis' interests in animal life. She had went to Stanford and studied genetics and later discovered the mutant Polycomb, that now is important in the understanding of gene regulation. They married each other and had three sons named Glenn, Hugh, and Keith. Glenn died on Christmas Eve of 1965 in a mountaineering accident; whereas, Keith became a molecular geneticist and Hugh became a lawyer. Pam developed an infection that caused her to have a visual and physical, partial unilateral paralysis. Her condition made it harder for her to get around, but she did not let it keep her from doing things she enjoyed. After her acquiring the condition, her relationships flourished as Pam and Lewis became closer and they even always welcomed visits from other scientists.

Personal Life

Lewis had a particularly unique and interesting personal and scientific life. He maintained a constant exercise routine in his day, as he started his mornings with breakfast and exercise, until he suffered from cancer. Lewis would normally have lunch with his faculty members at the Anthenaeum, then take a nap and return to the laboratory in the evening. The most constant part of his daily routine was that he would do most of his work at night. He also enjoyed playing the flute and would allow himself to have time to play the flute at night. In addition, Lewis appreciated other aspects of life even though they interrupted his typical schedule. Some other things he did with his time include: jogging, swimming, playing on the beach, playing chamber music with friends, going to see movies, and attending opera performances.Edward B. Lewis was a humble man who did not always receive attention for his works. Over time, his work with Drosophila became more appreciated and he began to attract the attention that he deserved. He even remained humble when winning the Nobel Prize and never allowed his honors and awards change him as an individual.

Honor and Awards

Edward B. Lewis was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Genetics Society of America, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a foreign member of the Royal Society (London) and an honorary member of the Genetical Society of Great Britain.

Awards received:

• Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal (1983)
• Gairdner Foundation International award (1987)
• Wolf Foundation prize in medicine (1989)
• Rosenstiel award (1990)
• National Medal of Science (1990)
• Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1991)

• Louisa Gross Horwitz prize (1992)

Edward B. Lewis also held honorary degrees from the University of Umeå and the University of Minnesota. He was also the recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1995, which he shared with Christine Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus. ~~~~Anheath19

Early Work With Drosophila Minnesota:

Lewis's initial Drosophila studies focused on gene function and evolution. His invention of the cis-trans test allowed him to determine whether genetic recombination will occur between members of what were then known as 'multiple allelic series.' In diploid organisms like flies it involved generating offspring that carry the two mutant alleles in cis on one chromosome and the two wild-type alleles in cis on the homologous chromosome. This can be represented symbolically for mutant alleles a and b as [a b/+ +] where the pluses represented the wild-type alleles and the slash separated the genotypes of the homologous chromosomes. The phenotype of these flies were then compared to that of offspring that carry the mutant alleles in trans [a +/+ b], therefore enabling individuals to ask whether the position of those alleles relative to each other affects the outcome.

Ionizing radiation

His less well known work was focused on the somatic effects of ionizing radiation, which initiated at the height of the Cold War in the mid-1950s. Lewis weighed in on the debate about the effects of low levels of radiation in causing cancer in humans. At that time many scientists and government officials in the United States and United Kingdom debated whether there was a threshold dose of radiation below which cancer would not be induced. Lewis took on the challenge of investigating the effects of low doses of ionizing radiation in cancer induction. Lewis's analyses concluded that the threshold hypothesis was not supported. He also realized that the health effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests had been underestimated by federal regulatory agencies.