John Tooze

John Tooze FRS (born 16 May 1938) was Vice President of Scientific and Facility Operations at Rockefeller University from 2005 to 2013 and formerly Executive Secretary of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

Tooze was educated at Handsworth Grammar School in Birmingham, Jesus College, Cambridge (BA, 1961) and King's College London (PhD, 1965) while working in the laboratory where Maurice Wilkins and John Randall worked.

Following his PhD, Tooze spent two years working as a postdoctoral researcher with James Watson at Harvard University. He returned to the UK and was appointed a Lecturer at King's College London from 1965 to 1968. He made a series of significant contributions to our understanding of the exocytic and endocytic pathways in neuroendocrine and exocrine cells and the exploitation of these pathways by enveloped animal viruses. He has also provided the first evidence that endocytic membranes are utilised in the morphogenesis of vaccinia and human cytomegalovirus.

Tooze also served as Executive Secretary of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) for over 20 years and Secretary of the European Molecular Biology Conference (EMBC). In 1982, he founded The EMBO Journal.

For two years he worked full-time as assistant and then deputy editor of the scientific journal Nature working with the editor-in-chief John Maddox.

Tooze was awarded the EMBO Gold Medal and EMBO Membership, both in 1986 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1994.