Edwin Southern

Professor Sir Edwin Southern, a molecular biologist with a PhD from Glasgow University, is known for the development of two methods for analyzing complex DNAs.

The ‘Southern Blot’, developed in Edinburgh, led to DNA fingerprinting in forensics and to the first molecular maps of the human genome; the oligonucleotide microarray developed in Oxford is widely used in research and diagnostics.

Following his retirement from the Chair of Biochemistry in the University of Oxford, he is now Chief Scientific Advisor of Oxford Gene Technology and a trustee of the Edina and Kirkhouse Trusts, which he set up using income from the invention of microarrays.