Anderson, the mysterious neurologist, dreams of winning the Nobel Prize. Perhaps he should seek advice at Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard's laboratory. In 1995, the genetics researcher became the first female German scientist to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. For decades, she and her colleague Eric F. Wieschaus concentrated on drosophila melanogaster, a fly about 2.5 millimeters in size. They studied its stages as an egg, larva and adult.

Because data was not yet processed by computers in the 1970s, research required an enormous amount of work. In two years, 20,000 fly mutations were studied, and 15 control genes were isolated. The "mistress of flies," as Nüsslein-Volhard was frequently referred to by her associates, worked tirelessly in Heidelberg and then in Tübingen. She received all the major prizes in her field and was awarded honorary doctorates by Princeton and Harvard, to name just two of many. But the Nobel Prize is probably the greatest honor. She is one of the few women who held a management position at the Max Planck Society.