Noah Whiteman is a lot of things. He’s a naturalist — he grew up in rural Minnesota, where his dad taught him to hunt with a bow and arrow and make a fire in the rain. He’s an evolutionary biologist at UC Berkeley, the first in his family to go to college. He’s a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, author of the 2023 book Most Delicious Poison and recipient of the 2025 Genetics Society of America Medal. He’s also a husband, married to a highly creative man he met just after arriving in Berkeley a decade ago.
When people think about LGBTQ Pride Month and what it means, this is the image Whiteman wants them to have — of a person who is complex, who can’t be easily categorized or boxed into a prescribed identity.
“Each of us is more than the sum of our parts,” says Whiteman. “I’m a human being — complicated and unknowable, like everybody else.”
Whiteman joined the Berkeley faculty in 2018 and is now a professor of integrative biology and of molecular and cell biology. At his lab, he and his researchers study the genetic basis of coevolution between species.
“I love Berkeley because I can be myself here,” he says, “which allows me to do my science and mentor students and fulfill my potential.”