Contributors

Walter Bodmer was two-and-a-half years old when his family fled Germany in 1938. While attending Cambridge University on a math scholarship, he took Ronald Fisher’s course on the statistics of population genetics. “It was a moment that changed my life,” he says. Fisher, later his doctoral advisor, counseled him to look beyond theoretical genetics, which Bodmer interpreted to mean, “Go west, young man, and study molecular biology.” Heeding this advice, he did a postdoc in Joshua Lederberg’s lab at Stanford, where Bodmer ultimately became a full professor in the genetics department of the medical school. In 1970 he moved to Oxford University, and in 1979 became director of research and later director general of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. While science is his “great pleasure,” Bodmer occasionally finds time to play the piano, ride, and scuba dive. A contributor to the first issue of The Scientist, he introduces our special ...