Walter Jakob Gehring (March 20, 1939 – May 29, 2014) was a Swiss developmental biologist. He was a professor at the Biozentrum Basel of the University of Basel, Switzerland. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich in 1965. After two years as a research assistant of Professor Ernst Hadorn he joined Professor Alan Garen's group at Yale University in New Haven as a postdoctoral fellow.