Personal data: Born on July 26, 1936 in Milford Haven, Wales, UK.

Academic and professional background: BA, 1958, MA, 1962, and Ph.D., 1961, in organic chemistry at Cambridge University, UK. Sc.D. in molecular biology at Cambridge University, UK, 1975.

Main fields: Protein engineering of factors involved in protein synthesis and explanation of function in terms of 3d structure from X-ray crystallography. Macromolecular mimicry and molecular mechanism of protein syntheses. Molecular and cellular mechanism of ageing. Use of phage display to identify differential cellular gene expression and to characterise mutant proteins. Molecular mechanism of disease including cancer and age-related diseases.

Career: 1961-62, Research Associate in Division of Biochemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. 1962-64, Visiting Fellow in Dr. M.W. Nirenberg's Section of Biochemical Genetics, National Heart Institute, N.I.H., Bethesda, Maryland, USA. 1964-74, Member of Scientific Staff, Medical Research Council, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge; Member of Division of Cell Biology under the direction of Francis Crick & Sydney Brenner. 1974-2006, Professor of biostructural chemistry at The University of Aarhus, Denmark. 2006, Emeritus Professor. Coordinator of the EU Integrated Project PROTEOMAGE 2006-2011.

Memberships: President of the IUBMB 2000-03; Chairman of FEBS, 1999-2000; Member of EMBO Council, 1998-2003, vice-chairman, 2003; Chairman of the Task Group on International Relations of the European Federation of Biotechnology; Vice President, EFB, 2006- .

Publications: 200 publications, including five books. Editorials: Founding member of the Editorial Boards of the EMBO Journal and of Nucleic Acids Research. Member of the Editorial Boards of RNA Biology; PEDS; and Molecular Aspects of Medicine.

Achievements: Discovery of the Initiation Codon for protein synthesis and hence start of protein coding, 1965-66; first crystallisation of tRNA, 1968; determination of the first structure of a GTP-binding protein, 1985; structural determination of the ternary complex, 1995.

Awards and honours: Foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters; Member of the Danish Academy of Natural Sciences; Honorary Member of the Hellenic Biochemical and Biophysical Society; Honorary Doctorate from the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, Moscow; 2001 Gold Medal for Peace and Science, Albert Schweitzer International University; 2005 Copernicus Medal from the Polish Academy of Sciences; 2006, Honorary Professor, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; 2006, Honorary Doctorate, University of Athens, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Athens, Greece.