Profile of Norbert Perrimon.

As a child, one of Norbert Perrimon’s first introductions to the scientific method came from his father. Perrimon’s father was interested in geology. “Often we would go to various areas in Normandy, where I grew up, and collect different types of soils, rocks, and fossils. I always found it quite interesting to see how from the collection of different bits and pieces, you could draw complex geological maps,” Perrimon says. Many years later, Perrimon would use a similar process to make his mark not in geology, but as a biologist working on the fruit fly, Drosophila. Over a long and distinguished career, Perrimon combined different pieces of data collected from the study of various fruit fly mutants to map complex developmental and signaling pathways. In recognition of his discoveries in the field of Drosophila development and signaling, and for developing important genetic tools for studying fruit flies, Perrimon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013. Now a professor of developmental biology and genetics at Harvard Medical School, Perrimon first started developing tools to study fruit fly genetics as a graduate student at the University of Paris.