Jordan Raff, César Milstein Professor of Cancer Cell Biology at the University of Oxford, has made seminal contributions to medical science by studying centrioles, centrosomes and cilia, pioneering our fundamental understanding of these organelles as well as their medical significance. He discovered that flies can proceed through most of their development without centrosomes changing the textbook view of centrosomes. Professor Raff showed that fly cells with too many centrosomes are predisposed to cancer providing the first direct demonstration of a causative link between centrosome amplification and cancer—an idea first proposed more than 100 years ago.