About the author   Siegfried Schwarz is Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Pathophysiology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His research focuses mainly on the structure-function relationships of hormones and receptors, in particular steroids, opiates and glycoprotein hormones such as human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Born in 1950, he studied medicine in Innsbruck and joined the Institute of Pathophysiology (then called the Institute of General and Experimental Pathology) after his graduation in 1975. In 1980, he established the Laboratory of Molecular Endocrinology which has been under his directorship ever since. After becoming Associate Professor in 1983, he spent two years on a Fogarty fellowship as Visiting Associate with the NIH, researching opiate and NMDA receptors using classical receptor-binding assays and computer-assisted mathematical modeling. Various other courses followed in areas such as recombinant DNA methodology and molecular modeling. He and his doctoral students have received the Schoeller Junkmann and the Marius Tausk Awards of the German Society of Endocrinology for their research on hCG. Professor Schwarz was repeatedly awarded grants by the Austrian Research Funds, most recently for his work on apoptosis of Kaposi's sarcoma cells. Professor Schwarz has edited a textbook on pathophysiology in 1986 and 1989, of which a new edition is in preparation. He is a member of the Innsbruck Medical Faculty's study commission, which is seeking to formulate a new curriculum. Molecular medicine will be playing a much more central role in future, and with his new book "Molecules of Life and Mutations", Professor Schwarz aims to contribute to students' as well as doctors' better understanding of the structure and function of proteins and their implications in disease.