Robert Edward Lee was educated at Cornell University (BS, 1960-4) and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Ph.D., 1966-71) and served as a Platoon leader in the US Army First Infantry Division (1964-6). He was Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1971-7), Associate Professor at Shiraz (Pahlavi) University, Shiraz, Iran (1977-9), Fellow of Schepens Eye Research Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston (1979-81) and is currently Coordinator of Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University, a post he has held since 1981.