Daniel St Johnston from the Wellcome/CRC Institute at the University of Cambridge was one of the two recipients of the EMBO Gold Medal in 2000. This medal was awarded in recognition of his extensive contribution to developmental biology, in particular his discoveries on how the main body axes are polarized in Drosophila and how specific mRNAs are localized. His account of his past and present research is presented in the Medal Review in this issue of The EMBO Journal on pages 6169--6179.