Graham Anderson, Professor of Experimental Immunology at the University of Birmingham, is internationally acknowledged as the UK's leading expert on the thymus. He pioneered new approaches to manipulate thymus tissues that have been adopted worldwide. His work's relevance to human disease is profound, given that the thymus shapes the T-lymphocyte compartment that balances immunocompetence with predisposition to autoimmunity. His recent studies highlight how thymic epithelial subtypes regulate qualitatively different T-cell subsets and how immunological memory can be found in "naïve-like" T-cells. Such advances offer clinically tractable targets germane to human disease, fuelling Anderson's recent investigations of human thymocyte biology as part of the MRC Human Atlas Project