John Sulston, PhD, FRS graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1963. From 1969 he worked at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, studying the biology of the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans. In 1992 he was drawn into the Human Genome Project, directing the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute until 2000. In 2002 he co-authored with Georgina Ferry The Common Thread, an account of the science, politics and ethics of this enterprise. He is now Vice-Chair of the UK Human Genetics Commission. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002.