Professor Sir Gordon Duff studied Medicine at Oxford and St Thomas's Hospital, London, where he also gained a PhD in Neuropharmacology. Following postgraduate medical training, he held junior faculty posts at Yale Medical School and the Howard Hughes Institute of Molecular Immunology. He joined Edinburgh Medical School in 1984, and in 1990 became Florey Professor of Molecular Medicine at Sheffield where he was also Faculty Research Dean and Director of the Division of Genomic Medicine. For two years, Sir Gordon was Chair of the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency before taking up his post as Principal of St Hilda's College in University of Oxford.

Sir Gordon was founding editor of the international research journal CYTOKINE, advisory editor to the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) journal, and is Past-President of the International Cytokine Society. He was Knighted for services to Public Health in 2007, and listed in the ‘Top 100' working scientists in the UK Science Council's list for 2014.