Ernst Hadorn

Ernst Hadorn (31 May 1902–4 April 1976) was a Swiss developmental biologist. He developed techniques for imaginal disc transplantation in Drosophila, leading to technique for the production of fate maps, and studied the organization of mature discs. He discovered the phenomenon of transdetermination. Hadorn was noted for both his experimental skills and teaching. and met Curt Sturn and began to work with Drosophila. He returned to Switzerland and later joined the University of Zurich where he worked until 1972. His research included mechanisms of gene expression and regulation, especially with experiments on mosaic genomes, with the experimental introduction of a foreign genome into a cell. One of his experiments was on the mutant Drosophila that had larvae that did not turn into pupae due to a defective hormone function. In 1955 he published Developmental Genetics and Lethal Factors which was translated to English in 1961. This earned him the Marcel Benoist Prize. His other major work was on imaginal discs begun in 1945 and he worked out the fate of different regions producing "fate maps" using experiments with transplanting tissues and studying transdetermination. Hadorn was one of the founders of the journal Developmental Biology. He died at Wohlen near Bern.