Lewis Wolpert CBE FRS FRSL FMedSci (19 October 1929 – 28 January 2021) was a South African-born British developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster.

[5] He completed his BSc in civil engineering at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg where he was exposed to progressive politics and communist ideas, and met Nelson Mandela in 1952.

[5] Wolpert shifted focus from applying his knowledge of soil mechanics to studying the science of dividing cells on the recommendation of a friend in South Africa.

[7] Wolpert was best known for the French flag model of embryonic development, which he put forward in a 1969 paper titled Positional Information and the Spatial Pattern of Cellular Differentiation in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

[8] The model uses the French tricolor flag to visually depict how embryonic cells interpret genetic code to create the same patterns, even when some pieces of the embryo are removed.

Wolpert is credited with the quote: "It is not birth, marriage, or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life.

[11] The essence of these concepts is that there is a dedicated set of molecules for spatial co-ordination of cells, identical across many species and across different developmental stages and tissues.

On 15 January 2004, Wolpert and biologist/parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake engaged in a live debate on the evidence for telepathy, held at the Royal Society of Arts in London.

In 1986 Wolpert was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Frankenstein's Quest: Development of Life.

[15] He was an atheist and took part in public debates about science and religion, though he admitted that some people benefit from religious experiences.

[5] He was also a lifelong friend of the fellow South African and author Jillian Becker, editor of the Atheist Conservative.

The book was withdrawn from sale by its publisher in 2014 after being found to contain numerous passages copied without attribution from the scientific literature and from various websites, including Wikipedia.