"Craig was not only an extraordinarily innovative scientist. He also willed important ideas forward into reality and practice. The more I understand how difficult it is to cause actually new things to happen the more I am in awe of what Craig was able to accomplish."
J. Craig Venter rose to fame in the field for publishing the first bacterial genome ever decoded, along with a list on gene annotations, in 1995. This achievement kicked off an age of discovery in genetics, with researchers racing to decode the genomes of other pathogens and eventually, animals.