Zaidín Experimental Station - CSIC

Craig Venter, the American biologist and entrepreneur who founded Celera Genomics to launch his own Human Genome Project in 1999 outside the public consortium, died Wednesday in San Diego at the age of 79, according to a statement from the J. Craig Venter Institute, which he led. Among other achievements, Venter completed the first full sequencing of a living organism’s genetic material and announced that he had succeeded in creating synthetic life.