J. Victor Small received a Ph.D. in 1969 at Kings College, London from where he moved to Denmark to take up a lectureship at Aarhus University, which he held until 1977. Thereafter, he became department head in a new institute, the Institute of Molecular Biology, established by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Salzburg, of which he is the current director. His work has centered on smooth muscle biochemistry and structure and on the mechanism of cell motility.