People in the news

Francis Collins

Director of the National Institutes of Health (since July 2009)

(NCHGR)

Why He Matters

A world-renowned geneticist and an evangelical Christian, Collins runs one of the most important scientific organizations in the world.

As director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Collins guides the research priorities of the nearly $40 billion agency that serves as the major source of funding for scientists all over the world.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Director, National Center for Human Genome Research (1993 to 2008); Professor of internal medicine and human genetics, University of Michigan (1984 to 1993); Postdoctoral fellow in human genetics and pediatrics, Yale Medical School (1981 to 1984)
Hometown: Staunton, Va.
Alma Mater: University of Virginia, B.S. (chemistry), 1970; Yale University, Ph.D. (physical chemistry), 1974; University of North Carolina, M.D., 1977

Religion: Christian (Evangelical)
Office: National Institutes of Health (NIH)9000 Rockville PikeBethesda, Maryland 20892
Web site

Path to Power

Collins was born to a playwright and a Ph.D.

His father, the English Ph.D. and professor at Mary Baldwin College, had "wide-ranging interests, including collecting folk music and staging medieval plays," The New York Times reported.

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His mother, the playwright, home-schooled her four sons on the family's 95-acre sheep farm in Staunton, Va. "It was a hard life," Collins told the Times. The family did not have indoor plumbing until Collins was 12.

But his homeschooling offered Collins a place to thrive. "The Collins boys and their mother would explore a topic, like the origins of words, for a week or two, doing nothing else, then move on to another subject, like mathematics." the Times reported. "As a result, Dr. Collins said, he grew up with an unquenchable curiosity and love of learning."

Collins entered the Virginia school system in the 6th grade, and by high school, he'd discovered a passion for chemistry. Though the rest of his family was more interested in literature and theater, "I was fortunate enough to have parents who encouraged me to chase down whatever sort of interests I had," Collins told his alumni magazine.

Collins entered college at the University of Virginia in 1966, when he was only 16-years-old. The summer before his senior year, at the age of 19, he married his high school sweetheart, whom he'd been dating since he was 15. He earned his B.S. in chemistry in 1970.

Molecular Biologist

He went on to Yale University where he earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1974, focusing on mathematically teasing out how atoms behave.

While studying for his Ph.D., he took a course in molecular biology, and learned about the biochemistry of DNA and RNA, the mysterious keys to heredity. "I was totally blown away!" he later said. "It destroyed all my misunderstandings about what biology was all about."

So though it set him back a few years in his career, Collins changed course and enrolled in the University of North Carolina's medical school, where he earned his M.D. in 1977.

Becoming a Christian

Collins's medical studies led him to ask questions about life and death that he felt ill-equipped to answer. For the first time in his life, he looked to faith. "I came at it from an intellectual point of view," Collins said. He read C.S. Lewis and came to the conclusion that faith could be rational. As a 27-year-old medical student, Collins became a Christian.

He stayed at UNC to do a residency in internal medicine from 1978 to 1981; he was chief resident in his final year.

In 1981, he returned to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow in the human genetics and pediatrics division of the Yale Medical School.

Genetics Professor

In 1984, Collins moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., to became a professor of internal medicine and human genetics at the University of Michigan. He established a lab to study the genetics of human diseases and began to make a name for himself developing a method for tracking genes called "positional cloning," which later became an important tool in molecular genetics.

In 1989, when he and a team discovered the gene that causes cystic fibrosis, his scientific reputation was made. "It took six years before it paid off," he said. "The frustrations at times were enormous but that experience convinced me that if we were ever really going to understand the hereditary basis of disease, we had to have a much more systematic way of doing things, which meant we had to have the genome."

Human Genome Project

Later the same year, the NIH created a National Center for Human Genome Research, helmed by James D. Watson, the famed co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. In 1990, the center officially kicked off work on creating a map of the billions of base-pairs that make up human life, The Human Genome Project. (History of the Human Genome Project, www.genome.gov)

After two years, Watson's famously unpredictable behavior rubbed his boss, then-NIH head Bernadine Healy, the wrong way. He was fired, and the search began for a new geneticist to run the Genome Project.

Collins, content teaching in his lab at Michigan, turned down the job the first time Healy offered it to him. But when the search began again, he reconsidered. He was named director of the National Center for Human Genome Research in 1993, which made him head of the Human Genome Project.

By 2000, Collins and his team had a "rough draft" of the genome's 3-billion letter code. "Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind," President Bill Clinton said upon revealing it in 2000.

The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, and Collins stayed on as head of the National Center for Human Genome Research.

In 2005, Collins authored the book "The Language of God," arguing that faith and reason do not contradict one another.

Collins stepped down from his role at the center in August 2008, amid rumors that he could be tapped to head the entire NIH.

On July 8, 2009, he was nominated for that role, and was confirmed in August.

The Issues

As director of the NIH, Collins heads the most important scientific grant-making organization in the world.

The NIH has a nearly $30 billion annual budget, but only about 20 percent of that goes to research done at its sprawling campus in Bethesda, Md. The vast bulk goes to fund the research of scientists across the U.S. and around the world.

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Collins is in a position to craft the NIH's scientific priorities and guide those research dollars.

Science and Religion

Collins is both one of America's foremost scientists, as well as a devout Christian, a rare combination.

At work, Collins' faith has been a blessing and a curse.

The Human Genome Project had some in the religious community worried about opening the door to genetic engineering or "playing God." Those fears were somewhat neutralized by the selection of Collins, himself a person of faith, to lead the project.

On the other hand, Collins' faith made secular groups question his views on abortion rights and stem-cell research (he is in favor of both). And his faith has long made other scientists wary. "Some in the field complain about what they see as Dr. Collins's evangelism," The New York Times reported.

"They suspect that I'm really here because I'm on a crusade," Collins told the New York Times in 1993. "But there is no conflict between being an absolutely rigorous scientist and being a person of faith."

Collins founded the BioLogos Foundation "to address the escalating culture war between science and faith in the United States."

The Human Genome

Collins is best known for leading the team that mapped the human genome.

But that same job has also opened him up to criticism since the project yielded far fewer tangible results than many hoped. Hopes for amazing medical cures and discoveries have faded steadily since its completion in 2003.

"Dr. Collins cannot be blamed for the unexpected scientific hurdles facing genetic research," the New York Times said. "But he played an important role in raising expectations impossibly high."

Evolution

Collins is a strong supporter of Darwin's theory that human beings and other organisms evolved from a common ancestor.

"The evidence is overwhelming," he wrote in a column for Beliefnet.com. "Although some people might still argue that DNA similarities do not prove common ancestry -- after all, God might have chosen to use the same DNA motifs for animals of anatomic similarity -- the details of the analysis make that conclusion no longer tenable."

Though some people of faith argue that alternative theories, including creationism and intelligent design, are closer to Biblical truth, Collins has criticized both theories for lacking proper scientific evidence.

The Network

From 1993 to 1999, Collins reported to then-NIH Head Harold E. Varmus. Varmus was named one of the co-chairs of Obama's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.

Collins was named head of the Human Genome Project during the Bill Clinton's administration, and continued his post through George W. Bush's presidency.

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Additional Resources