Nicholas D. Holland

Nicholas D. Holland received his doctorate in biology from Stanford University in California in 1964. After spending two years in Italy at Stazione Zoologica di Napoli as a postdoctoral fellow, he returned to California to take an assistant professorship in the Marine Biology Research Division at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego (UCSD). He was later promoted to Associate Professor (1972) and then to Professor (1978) of marine biology at the same institution. He was appointed Distinguished UCSD Professor in 2008.

His research interests lie in understanding how the vertebrates evolved from the invertebrates, working extensively with amphioxus. In particular, he examines body part homologies between distantly related animals, determined through comparative molecular genetics.

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