While a student at the California Institute of Technology, Leroy Hood received words of wisdom from his mentor William Dreyer: “If you want to practice biology, do it on the leading edge and if you want to be on the leading edge, invent new tools for deciphering biological information.” With this advice, Hood invented some of modern molecular biology’s core instruments, profoundly impacting research and medicine. His DNA Sequencer made possible the Human Genome Project (to identify the nearly 30,000 genes in human DNA). Read more here.