Francis Collins

Francis Sellers Collins is an American physiciangeneticist noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project. He is director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

Collins was born in Staunton, Virginia, the youngest of four sons of Fletcher Collins and Margaret James Collins. Raised on a small farm in Virginias Shenandoah Valley, Collins was home schooled until the sixth grade. He attended Robert E. Lee High School in Staunton, Virginia. Through most of his high school and college years he aspired to be a chemist, and he had little interest in what he then considered the messy field of biology. What he referred to as his formative education was received at the University of Virginia, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry in 1970. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Physical Chemistry at Yale University in 1974. While at Yale, a course in biochemistry sparked his interest in the subject. After consulting with his mentor from the University of Virginia, Carl Trindle, he changed fields and enrolled in medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning an Doctor of Medicine there in 1977.

Source: Wikipedia