Sir John Gurdon enjoying the Temburong rainforest

Sir John Gurdon, one of the fathers of modern cell biology and a pioneer of cloning, visited Brunei privately in April 2009 following an official lecture he gave as guest of the British High Commission in Singapore. Sir John, accompanied by Dr Alan Colman - a former student who is now a leading British cell biologist in his own right, was interested to see at first hand Borneo's tropical rainforest. The party were accompanied to the Universiti of Brunei Darussalam rainforest research station by the Singaporean High Commissioner Joseph Koh, himself an authority on rainforest spiders and the British High Commissioner John Saville.