Peter Barnes is Professor of Thoracic Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Head of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College and Honorary Consultant Physician at Royal Brompton Hospital, London. He qualified at Cambridge and Oxford Universities was appointed to his present post in 1987. He has published over 1000 peer-review papers on asthma, COPD and related topics and has edited over 40 books. He is also amongst the top 50 most highly cited researchers in the world and has been the most highly cited clinical scientist in the UK and the most highly cited respiratory researcher in the world over the last 20 years. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007, the first respiratory researcher for over 150 years. He is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of the WHO/NIH global guidelines on asthma (GINA) and COPD (GOLD). He also serves on the Editorial Board of over 30 journals and is currently an Associate Editor of Chest and respiratory Editor of PLoS Medicine. He has given several prestigious lectures, including the Amberson Lecture at the American Thoracic Society and the Sadoul Lecture at the European Respiratory Society.