Tim Spector

King’s College London
Professor of Genetic Epidemiology

Tim Spector is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at Kings College, London & Director of the Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. Professor Spector graduated from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, London. After working in General Medicine, he completed a MSc in Epidemiology, and his MD thesis at the University of London.

He founded the UK Twins Registry of 11,000 twins in 1993, which is one of the largest collections of genotype and phenotype information on twins worldwide. Its breadth of research has expanded to cover a wide range of common complex traits many of which were previously thought to be mainly due to ageing and environment. He has published over 800 research articles on common diseases and is ranked in the top 1% of world scientists. He has been elected as Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology

He has written several original articles on the heritability of a wide range of diseases and traits including back pain, acne, inflammation, obesity, memory, musical ability and sexuality. He has published widely on obesity, food and nutrition. He also is interested in new areas of biology such as epigenetics and recently our gut microbiome and is director of the British Gut project and co-founder of MapMyGut Ltd.

He has written several books, He is also author of – The Diet Myth: The real science behind what we eat by W&N 2015 and Identically different: Why you can change your genes, by W&N in 2012 and Your Genes Unzipped in 2003.