Colin Blakemore studied medical sciences at the University of Cambridge and completed his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968. He taught at the University of Cambridge for 11 years and in 1979 took up the Chair of Physiology at the University of Oxford. He is also Director of the Oxford Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, and was President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for 1997–98. He has worked as a Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, the University of California and the Salk Institute, and also in Japan, Switzerland, Italy, France, the Czech Republic and China. He holds the degree of DSc from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, honorary doctorates from Aston and Salford Universities and an honorary fellowship from Cardiff University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Institute of Biology, a member of the Academia Europaea and a Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research has been concerned with many aspects of vision and the early development of the brain. His awards include the 1996 international Alcon Prize for vision research and the 1989 Royal Society Michael Faraday Award for the furtherance of the public understanding of science. He is a member of the NRPB Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation.