John Evans hails from Newcastle upon Tyne. He studied Chemistry at Imperial College, London, and carried out his PhD at the University of Cambridge supervised by Lord (Jack) Lewis and Brian Johnson. His postdoctoral research was at Princeton University, with Jack Norton, and then with ICI and Royal Society Pickering Research Fellowships back at Cambridge. He moved with the Pickering Fellowship to Southampton in 1976, became a lecturer in 1978, and a professor in 1990. He is now an emeritus professor there. He was science program advisor at the Diamond Light Source Ltd from 2002 to 2007. His experience in applying XAFS spectroscopy to chemical problems extends over 35 years; his research group has carried out experiments at the SRS, ESRF, SLS, Hasylab, Diamond, and APS.