Born 1961, in Prisser, Germany. Undergraduate studies of biology at the Universities of Bielefeld and Cologne, PhD Tübingen (1988). Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA (1989-1993), Assistant and Associate Professor, Salk Institute, La Jolla, USA (1993-2002), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, since 2022 the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen (since 2001), Adjunct Professor, Salk Institute, USA (since 2003), Adjunct Professor at the University of Tübingen (since 2004).

Detlef Weigel has received numerous honors including the Otto Bayer Award (2010), the State Research Prize Baden-Württemberg (2011), the GSA Medal of the Genetics Society of America (2016) and the Novozymes Prize (2020). He is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.