Persistence, humility and HIV: life lessons from immunology

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Scientists are sometimes described as ‘being born for the lab’, while the direction they take is just a matter of following the pathway. For Clive Gray, professor of immunology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, the route was anything but straightforward.

As a teenager, his dream was to be a vet, then a doctor, until a career adviser told him he was “not competitive enough” to succeed. He also considered community work, and then medical journalism. But after years of uncertainty, he found his way into biological research, a career that led to him being awarded the Royal Society Africa Prize in September 2026, for his pioneering research in HIV and reproductive immunology in Africa and globally.