Joseph G. Gall completed his Ph.D. in 1952 in the Zoology Department at Yale, working with the Drosophila geneticist Donald F. Poulson. His first faculty position was in the Zoology Department at the University of Minnesota, where he remained for eleven years. In the fall of 1963 he returned to Yale as Professor of Biology with a joint appointment in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. In 1983 he joined the Embryology Department of the Carnegie Institution in Baltimore as a Staff Member, where he remains today. In 1984 he was appointed American Cancer Society Professor of Developmental Genetics, a lifetime appointment.

His long-term interests have been in the structure and function of the cell, particularly the nucleus. His earliest studies involved the giant lampbrush chromosomes and the amplified nucleoli found in oocytes of frogs and salamanders. In collaboration with his graduate student Mary Lou Pardue, he developed in situ hybridization, now one of the most widely used techniques in cell and developmental biology. Studies on the protozoan Tetrahymena with his postdoctoral fellow Elizabeth Blackburn led to the discovery of the repeated GGGGTT sequence that characterizes the telomeres of most eukaryotic organisms. Most recently Dr. Gall has focused on the structure and function of nuclear bodies, especially the Cajal body and histone locus body.

Dr. Gall was elected president of the American Society for Cell Biology in 1967 and received its E. B. Wilson award in 1983. He was a member of the Corporation (trustee) of Yale University, 1989-1995. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. In 2006 he received the Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award in Medical Research and in 2007 the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize