Gisela Mosig completed her undergraduate work at the University of Bonn and her graduate work, studying plant genetics, at the University of Cologne, where she received her doctorate in 1959. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Gus Doermann at Vanderbilt University, focusing specifically upon the genetics of bacteriophage T4 viruses.

From 1962 to 1965, Dr. Mosig was a research associate at the Carnegie Institution Laboratory, where she worked with Nobel laureate Alfred Hershey. With Hershey's approval and support, she challenged lab dogma regarding the way the T4 virus's DNA recombined.

This zest for re-examining and challenging scientific dogma continued when Dr. Mosig became an independent scientist and faculty member at Vanderbilt in 1965. After serving 38 years in the Department of Molecular Biology (now Biological Sciences Department), Mosig was named Professor Emerita in 2002. She passed away in 2003.