Marcus Richards is a Programme Leader at the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, and a Reader at University College London. Marcus graduated in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University in 1981 and obtained a PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, London University in 1989, in the area of psychophysiology, learning and personality. In 1990 he became a faculty member at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, working on neurodegenerative disorders of ageing. In 1992 he returned to the Institute of Psychiatry, where he held an Alzheimer’s Disease Society Research Fellowship to investigate cross-cultural aspects of cognitive function in later life. He joined the MRC National Survey of Health and Development in 1996, and also collaborates with the MRC General Practice Research Framework. Marcus is a Reader in Cognitive Epidemiology at University College London. His work is concerned with cognitive function, particularly with a life course approach to cognitive ageing and its consequences for health and function. This includes the influence of early experience, nutrition and growth, as well as that of education, adult socioeconomic status and mobility and health behaviours, and interactions between cognitive function, physiological function and mental health.