Walter Bodmer

Sir Walter Bodmer (born 1936) is a German-born British human geneticist. Bodmer has developed models for population genetics and done work on the HLA system and the use of somatic cell hybrids for human linkage studies.

Bodmer became the Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, in 1996. He was the Director General (1991–1996) and director of research (1979–1991) of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974 and was knighted in 1986.

As well as his being Principal, he is also the Head of the Cancer and Immunogenetics Laboratory in the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford. Research interests of the laboratory include the fundamental genetics and biology of colorectal cancer.

He retired as Principal of Hertford College towards the end of 2005, to be replaced by Dr. John Landers. He also left his position as Chancellor of the University of Salford, England, in April 2005, to be replaced by Sir Martin Harris.

In 2005, Sir Walter Bodmer was appointed to lead a £2.3 million project (roughly 4.5 million USD) by the Wellcome Trust (roughly 4.5 million USD) at the Oxford University to examine the genetic makeup of the United Kingdom. Professor Sir Walter Bodmer was joined by Oxford Professor Peter Donnelly (a population genetics and statistics expert) and the Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow Professor Lon Cardon.

Professor Bodmer said "Our aim is to characterise the genetic make-up of the British population and relate this to the historical and archaeological evidence."

The researchers have also begun to present some of their findings to the public via the Channel 4 television series "Faces of Britain." On 14 April 2007, Channel 4 in Britain aired a program that highlighted the study’s current findings.

The project will take DNA samples from hundreds of volunteers throughout Britain and find tell-tale fragments of DNA that reveal the biological traces of successive waves of colonisers — Celts, Saxons, Vikings, etc. — in various parts of Britain.

The findings show that the Viking invasion of Britain was predominately from Danish Vikings while the Orkney Islands were settled by Norwegian Vikings. Additionally, the results show that the Cornish people have the MC1R gene which makes them a true Celtic race that are more closely related to the Welsh, Irish, and Bretons rather than their English neighbours.