Born and raised in London, Kevin Davies studied at Oxford University and moved to the U.S. in 1987 after earning his PhD in genetics. He endured two years at the bench before seeking refuge in the editorial office of Nature magazine. He was the founding editor of the journal Nature Genetics and has also worked at Cell Press and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is currently the editor of Bio-IT World magazine, based in Boston.
The $1,000 Genome is Kevin's third book, and second for the Free Press. He published Cracking the Genome, about the race for the Human Genome Project, in 2000. His first book, Breakthrough, co-authored with Michael White, was about the race to identify the "breast cancer gene" in the mid-'90s.