Athel Cornish-Bowden is, since 2009, Directeur de Recherche Emerite at the CNRS in Marseilles. He studied at the University of Oxford, and after post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, he spent the early part of his career at the University of Birmingham as Lecturer and later Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry. In 1987 he moved to France as Directeur de Recherche (1ere classe) in the CNRS in Marseilles. He has authored more than 200 scientific publications, including several books as author and as editor. He has served on the editorial boards of several journals.