Christopher Ashley

Professor Chris Ashley, after doctoral work at the University of Bristol with Professor Peter Caldwell FRS, spent three years in the US as a Fulbright Travel Scholar, where he developed in 1967 with his colleague Ellis Ridgway, the novel aequorin luminescence method for measuring transient free calcium events in cells, pre-dating by some 10 years the development of calcium-sensitive fluorescent dyes to measure these intracellular phenomena. He returned to Bristol and was appointed to a University Lectureship in Physiology in 1970, and then to Oxford in 1976 as University Lecturer in Physiology and Medical Tutor at Corpus Christi College. He was awarded a DSc from the University of Oxford in 1987, elected an Hon MRCP by the Royal College of Physicians in 1998 and to a Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2002. He is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Muscle Research and Cell Motility, which he co-founded in 1980 with Richard Tregear.