Tar troubles

Michael Hastings graduated in Marine Biology from the University of Liverpool in 1977, and remained at the Port Erin Marine Laboratory, Isle of Man, to conduct PhD work on tidal clocks and behavioural rhythms in crustaceans. After taking a post-graduate Certificate of Education in Manchester (1980), in 1981 he moved to the Department of Anatomy in the University of Cambridge as a post-doc to work on the role of melatonin in seasonal timing in mammals. As a faculty member, working with long-term collaborator Liz Maywood, he developed an interest in the neurochemistry of the circadian clock. In 2001 he resigned his Readership in the University to take up a Group Leader position at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), with the goal of ‘learning some molecular biology’. This ambition remains.