Francis S. Collins is the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes for Health. Born in Staunton, Virginia, Collins was raised on a small farm and home-schooled until the sixth grade. Collins obtained his undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Virginia in 1970, and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Yale University in 1974. Recognizing that a revolution was beginning in molecular biology and genetics, Collins changed fields and enrolled in medical school at the University of North Carolina, where he encountered the field of medical genetics, earning his M.D, in 1977. After a residency and chief residency in internal medicine in Chapel Hill, Collins returned to Yale for a fellowship in human genetics, where he worked on methods of crossing large stretches of DNA to identify disease genes. Collins continued to develop these ideas after joining the...