Professor Christopher Mathew is Professor of Molecular Genetics at King’s College London. He has made a series of major contributions to a range of monogenic and polygenic disorders. In Fanconi’s anaemia his group went from gene isolation to mutation detection and has culminated in the fascinating discovery of compensatory somatic mutations in the genes causing this disease. This is a fascinating example of natural gene therapy. In inflammatory bowel disease he was part of the collaboration which led to the mapping of the first Crohn’s disease gene on chromosome 16. This is the first example of a gene for a complex trait which has gone all the way from chromosomal linkage to identification of the gene, NOD-2, involved in macrophage innate immune activation, reported by three groups during the last few weeks, including one led by Christopher Mathew.