Professor Sambrook is internationally renowned for his classic studies on DNA tumour viruses and the molecular biology of normal and neoplastic eukaryotic cells. His Tumour Virus Group at Cold Spring Harbor identified and mapped all of the major genes of SV 40 and adenoviruses, determined their transcriptional control in lytically infected and transformed cells and elucidated the mechanism of integration of these viruses into the genome of the host cell. He has also made major contributions towards understanding intracellular traffic and protein folding and is an influential leader in the field of the molecular genetics of human cancer.