Sir Chris Evans
Biotechnology, entrepreneurship and biochemistry
Sir Christopher Thomas Evans is widely regarded as one of Britain's most successful and colourful biotechnology entrepreneurs, sometimes nicknamed 'The Welsh Wizard'. Since the 1980s he has launched and supported more than fifty companies in the biotechnology sector, twenty of which have listed on six different stock markets.
He is the co-founder of Merlin Biosciences, established in 1996, which grew into one of Europe's largest specialist biomedical venture capital and advisory firms, backing pharmaceutical and bioscience research firms across Britain. He was appointed OBE for services to biotechnology in 1995 and later knighted.
Chris was born in Port Talbot, South Wales, on the 29th of November, 1957, the son of a steelworker, and grew up on a council estate before attending St Christopher's College. He studied microbiology at Imperial College London and gained a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Hull, before moving into academia and the pharmaceutical sector in the United States.