The Rev Dr Geoffrey Cook was educated at Ipswich School and at Nottingham University. Gaining a PhD from Cambridge University in 1963, he was a Research Associate in Biochemistry at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, from 1963 to 1965. Returning to Cambridge, he held posts successively at the Strangeways Research Laboratory (1965-76), the Department of Pharmacology (1976-86) and the Department of Anatomy (from 1986). He was a Canadian Commonwealth Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology of the University of Alberta in 1977. He became an Associate Lecturer in the University of Cambridge in 1978. He was elected a Fellow of St Edmund's College in 1978 and was Vice-Master of the College from October 1983 to his retirement from the post in September 2007.