ELAINE FUCHS IS the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development at Rockefeller University in New York City. She is also a research investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Fuchs was raised in suburban Chicago, where a semirural childhood of farms and exposure to nature stimulated her interest in science, as did members of her family. Her father was a geochemist who worked at Argonne National Laboratories. His specialty was meteorites. She also had an aunt who worked at the laboratories as a biologist, and her sister is a neurosurgeon.

Fuchs graduated in 1972 from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's of science degree and the highest distinction in the chemical sciences. Her undergraduate thesis was in physical chemistry and her ...