Even as a young post-doctoral scientist, Anne showed natural leadership qualities. The clarity with which she grasped key issues, her tenacity in pursuing her research aims, the intensity of her focus and the scale of her vision were quite exceptional. These personal qualities are matched by her absolute scientific integrity, decisiveness and quite unrivalled energy. After training as an undergraduate and postgraduate in the UK, she was recruited to the DNAX Research Institute in California, at that time one of the best research environments in the world. Here she was given the freedom and funds to develop her ideas. She rapidly became a key figure, not only at DNAX but throughout the USA. Her expertise and advice was soon sought by many distinguished and established immunologists, and she quickly became a key leader in the field of T-cell differentiation and cytokine research. Her findings demonstrated the role of a number of key cytokines in activation or down-regulation of immune responses, and with this knowledge she is pursuing therapeutic strategies for intervention in infectious diseases. Ranked the second most cited immunologist in the world and despite several offers of distinguished posts in the USA, Anne returned to the UK in 2001 to a permanent position as Head of a new Division of Immunoregulation at NIMR. Anne has continued her remarkable momentum and is in constant demand on both sides of the Atlantic as a meeting organiser, chair and speaker. Anne is undoubtedly among the world’s most influential immunologists. She has many marks of distinction, recently being appointed the first non-US advisory editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine.