Following a first degree in Chemistry from Oxford, Peter Willett obtained MSc and PhD degrees in Information Science from the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield. He joined the faculty of the Department in 1979, was awarded a Personal Chair in 1991 and a DSc in 1997, and is now the Head of the Department. He was the recipient of the 1993 Skolnik Award of the American Chemical Society Division of Chemical Information, the 1997 Distinguished Lecturer Award of the New Jersey Chapter of the American Society for Information Science, the 2001 Kent Award of the Institute of Information Scientists, the 2002 Lynch Award of the Chemical Structure Association Trust, and the 2005 American Chemical Society Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research. He is included in Who’s Who, is a member of the editorial boards of three international journals, and has over 450 publications describing novel computational techniques for the processing of chemical, biological and textual information.