In 1995, Edward B. Lewis, Caltech graduate (Ph.D. 1942) and former faculty member, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Eric F. Wieschaus for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development.

His most important discoveries concerned homoeotic genes, the genes that tell undifferentiated cells of an embryo where and how to form the different tissues and organs of the body.