J. Craig Venter

In his effort to decode the human genome, scientist J. Craig Venter volunteered his own DNA to be analyzed and made publicly available. His autobiography, A Life Decoded — My Genome: My Life details his side of the complicated and bureaucratic race to sequence the human genome.

Venter's early work to decode the genome through private research company Celera Genomics earned him both praise and criticism. His team competed with the National Institutes of Health publicly funded effort, the Human Genome Project.