Born and raised in Oxford, Jonathan Stoye was educated at Cambridge University, reading Natural Sciences (1970-1973). He lived the next eight years in Basel, Switzerland, first working as a technician then as a PhD student. In 1982 he moved to Boston, USA as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of John Coffin, a leading retrovirologist. In 1989 he returned to the UK, starting his own lab at the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill. He headed the NIMR Virology Division from 2001-2015 and was joint Head of the Infections and Immunity Group. From 2015 until 2024 he was a Senior (then Principal) Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute, assuming the role of International Activities Ambassador in 2019. He is now an Emeritus Scientist at the Crick. His scientific career has been devoted to understanding the mutual relationship between retroviruses and their hosts with particular emphasis on endogenous retroviruses and host factors limiting retrovirus replication. One notable achievement was the first cloning of a host restriction factor, Fv1, in 1996. He has served on several scientific advisory committees, including the Pontifical Academy for Life Working Group on Xenotransplantation (2001), the Advisory Committee for Releases into the Environment (2002-2008), the United Kingdom Xenotransplantation Interim Regulatory Authority (2003-2006) and the MRC’s Infection and Immunity Board (2017-2021). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2017.