Curt Stern (August 30, 1902 – October 23, 1981) was a German-born American geneticist.
Curt Jacob Stern was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany on August 30, 1902. He was the first son of Earned S. Stern, born 1862 in England, who was interned during World War I, and Anna Stern, née Anna Liebrecht who was a schoolteacher (b. 1873). Her father C. Liebrecht was a teacher at the Israelitische Gemeindeschule Gleiwitz, a "Gymnasium" in Upper Silesia, with a PhD in mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Breslau. His father dealt in antiques and dental supplies, and his mother was a schoolteacher. The family moved to a suburb in Berlin shortly after his birth. As a child, he showed a strong interest in biology and natural history. He went to the "Hindenburgschule" in Berlin-Oberschoeneweide. Supported by two high school teachers and his parents, he decided to study zoology. He entered the University of Berlin in 1920 at age 18.
Stern conducted his doctoral studies at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which was a one- to two-hour commute each way from his home. He chose the lab of Max Hartmann, a protozoologist, to study the reproduction of a protozoan of the order Heliozoa. In 1923 after only 3 years, he received a Ph.D. for the description of its mitosis, the youngest person to receive a Ph.D. from the university at that time. "To achieve his degree so early under these circumstances was an early, clear signal of the remarkable combination of high intellectual ability, photographic memory, and stamina that was to characterize his career."
Stern had read and critiqued a paper on the basis for crossing-over by Richard Goldschmidt, the 45-year-old director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology. Six months later Goldschmidt returned the critique to Stern without comment, called him into his office and offered him a post-graduate fellowship financed by the Rockefeller University at Columbia University, N.Y. to study genetics in Thomas Hunt Morgan's lab, the famous "Fly Room", so-named for the fruit fly Drosophila, the subject of genetic research for Morgan.