Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995. As a biologist, she has long studied DNA, biochemistry, and embryonic development.

On August 22, Emma, Germany’s leading feminist magazine, published Chantal Louis’ interview with Nüsslein-Volhard, in which the biologist both attacked core claims advanced by trans activists and criticized their anti-scientific basis.

Suggesting that an ignorance of basic biology may be to blame for the “unscientific” claim that there are many genders, Nüsslein-Volhard noted (in German; the following is a Google translation) that “all mammals have two sexes. There’s the one sex that produces the eggs [and] has two X chromosomes. That’s called female. And there’s the other one that makes the sperm [and] has an X and a Y chromosome. That’s called male.”

After revisiting what she regarded as biological basics, Nüsslein-Volhard noted that the existence of hermaphrodites doesn’t complicate matters or blur the lines between the sexes. “The fact that there are hermaphrodites does not change the fact that there are two germ cells, eggs and sperm, and therefore two sexes.”