Jonathan Slack is Head of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath, England. After a PhD at Edinburgh University and a postdoc at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, he became a scientist with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and studied the development of the early embryo, using the frog Xenopus as an experimental organism. He identified fibroblast growth factors as inducing factors and showed they had a prominent role in controlling the formation of the head-to-tail pattern in the embryo. He moved to Bath in 1995 and current work is focused on the mechanisms of regeneration of missing parts and transdifferentiation of one tissue type into another.
In addition to 150 research and review papers in scientific journals, he has written three books. “From Egg to Embryo” (1983,1991) served to introduce experimental embryology to molecular biologists. “Egg and Ego” (1999) is a light-hearted account of life in academic science. "Essential Developmental Biology" (2001) is an undergraduate textbook.
He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), was awarded the Waddington Medal of the British Society for Developmental Biology in 2002, and elected to membership of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004.
