Robert H. Waterston

While Waterston is famed as a researcher, he started his career as a medical practitioner. Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1943, he received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University and his Ph.D. and his M.D. from the University of Chicago.

In 1976, he began a long association with Washington University in St. Louis. Over the years he was an assistant professor/then professor in anatomy and neurobiology and in genetics. He spent a year as sabbatical visitor in Cambridge at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. From 1993 until 2002 he was the James S. McDonnell Professor and Chairman of Genetics as well as the Director of the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University School of Medicine.

In 2002 he became the William H. Gates III Endowed Chair in Biomedical Sciences and Chairman of the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle.