chemistry

Gregory Hannon

Gregory Hannon is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Gregory Hannon rather than just read about it. In short: Gregory James Hannon ((1964-05-05)5 May 1964 – (2026-04-04)4 April 2026) was a professor of molecular cancer biology and director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute at the University of Cambridge. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge while also serving as a director of cancer genomics at the New York Genome Center and an adjunct professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Key takeaways

Gregory Hannon belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Gregory Hannon to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Gregory Hannon from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Gregory James Hannon ((1964-05-05)5 May 1964 – (2026-04-04)4 April 2026) was a professor of molecular cancer biology and director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute at the University of Cambridge. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge while also serving as a director of cancer genomics at the New York Genome Center and an adjunct professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Career and research Hannon was known for his contributions to small RNA biology, cancer biology, and mammalian genomics. He had a role in the discovery of oncogenes, beginning with work that led to the identification of CDK inhibitors and their links to cancer. More recently, his work focused on small RNA biology, which led to an understanding of the biochemical mechanisms and biological functions of RNA interference (RNAi). He developed widely used tools and strategies for manipulation of gene expression in mammalian cells and animals and generated genome-wide short hairpin RNA (shRNA) libraries that are available to the cancer community; he was among the first to demonstrate roles for microRNAs in cancer. His laboratory also discovered the piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway and linked this to transposon repression and the protection of germ cell genomes. His innovations included the development of selective re-sequencing strategies, broadly termed exome capture. In 2017, Hannon was awarded a £20 million Cancer Grand Challenges award to unite the IMAXT team - a team of researchers from Switzerland, Ireland, Canada, the USA and the UK, with far ranging expertise from cancer biology and pathology to astronomy and even VR video game design. The team's aim is to create an interactive 3D map of cancer, which could be explored in virtual reality. The programme could transform the way researchers study cancer by providing unprecedented insight into how individual cells are arranged and how they interact to allow the tumour to grow. In 2018, it was announced Hannon would guide the Functional Genomics Centre, a collaboration between Cancer Research UK and AstraZeneca. The centre, housed inside the Milner Therapeutics Institute, aims to act as a hub for genetic screens, cancer models, CRISPR tool design, and computational approaches to big data to understand genetic changes in cancer development and identify potential drug targets.

Awards and honours Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, 1997 Rita Allen Scholar, 2000 US Army Breast Cancer Research Programme Innovator Award, 2002 AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research, 2005 National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology, 2007 Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, 2007 National Academy of Sciences Member, 2012 Royal Society Wolfson Professorship, 2015 Academy of Medical Sciences member, 2017 EMBO member, 2018 The Royal Society Fellow, 2018 European Academy of Cancer Sciences Fellow, 2019 Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy, 2020

References

This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Gregory Hannon

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Gregory Hannon claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Gregory Hannon before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Gregory Hannon ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Gregory Hannon

In research: Gregory Hannon appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Gregory Hannon in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Gregory Hannon is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1964 births, 2026 deaths, British molecular biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Gregory Hannon outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Gregory Hannon in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Gregory Hannon means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Gregory Hannon out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Gregory Hannon in simple terms?

Why does Gregory Hannon matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Gregory Hannon?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Gregory Hannon.