Professor Michael Ashburner MA, PhD, ScD, FRS

Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly) is an ideal subject for genetic research because its life cycle is so very brief: from egg to adult in ten days. Michael Ashburner is one of the world's leading geneticists. For most of his career he analysed the genetic structure of Drosophila melanogaster, observing the patterns of chromosome puffing to understand the process of genetic control of development. He was one of the team which sequenced the creature's genome, and went on to play a role in the project to sequence the human genome, as Joint Head of the European Bioinformatics Institute at the genome campus at Hinxton. Michael was the first undergraduate of the College to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. While a student he was arrested and briefly jailed for demonstrating on behalf of the anti-nuclear Committee of 100; his tutor's response was to arrange for books to be got to him.

List of all Churchill Fellows and By-Fellows