Antonio Fontdevila was born in Barcelona, Spain. After completing a postdoc at the University of California, Davis, he returned to Spain where he was a Professor of Genetics at the University of Santiago de Compostela (1973-1980) and then at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (1980-2008), where he remains as an active Emeritus Professor. During this time he was Chairman of his department (1988-90), supervised 16 PhD theses, was Visiting Professor at more than 20 universities and invited speaker more than 35 times in 10 different countries. He has written 120 peer reviewed papers, edited one book, and co-authored two text books, as well as serving on several journal editorial boards, steering committees, and society councils. His research interests include the measurement of fitness in natural populations; ecological and evolutionary genetics of colonisation; molecular evolution and population genetics of transposable elements; and the evolution of reproductive isolation.