Dr. Bustamante obtained his Bachelors in Biology in 1973 from Cayetano Heredia University, in Lima, Peru, his hometown, then his Masters in Biochemistry, from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. In 1975, he was admitted to the Biophysics Graduate Program at the University of California, Berkeley, the same year he was named a Fulbright Scholar. After completing his PhD in Biophysics in 1981, he stayed on briefly at Berkeley for postdoc work before joining the faculty of the Chemistry Department at the University of New Mexico, in 1982. The experiments he devised subsequently produced a breakthrough discovery: it was possible to manipulate single molecules of DNA and precisely measure their mechanical elasticity, enabling “a more realistic view of the cell’s inner workings.” Dr. Bustamante joined the University of Oregon, in 1991, as Professor of Chemistry and member of the Institute of Molecular Biology. Three years later, he was appointed Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. In 1998, he returned to UC Berkeley, as Professor in the Physics, Chemistry, and Molecular and Cell Biology departments, where he remains today. Dr. Bustamante continues to develop novel methods of single-molecule manipulation. His work, considered to have opened a new chapter in biomolecular research, has been duly recognized. Time magazine nominated him one America’s Best in 2001. In 2002, the same year he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society awarded him the Biological Physics Prize. He received the Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics from the National Academy of Sciences in 2004; a year after that, the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award by the American Association of Physics Teachers and a Doctor honoris causa by the University of Chicago. He is Director of the Advanced Microscopies Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund.