Fulker's father had been a miner in Wales, but moved the family to London, where Fulker grew up. He was initially trained as a teacher, and working in this profession (teaching chemistry) and as a photographer. Fulker subsequently obtained a
BSc in
psychology at
Birkbeck College,
London University, graduating with first class honours, and deciding to work in
genetics. Fulker pursued this interest, obtaining both a Masters and a
PhD at
Birmingham University supervised by John Jinks. Exceptionally for a post-graduate student, his first publication (on fruit fly mating) was published in
Science in 1966. Fulker joined the staff at Birmingham as a
lecturer where he remained until moving in 1975 to a senior lectureship at the
Institute of Psychiatry in London, where he also directed its animal laboratories at the
Bethlem Royal Hospital. In 1985 Fulker moved to a professorship at the
University of Colorado's
Institute for Behavioral Genetics at
Boulder. In 1996, he was recruited back to the
Institute of Psychiatry to the new
Medical Research Council funded
Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre. Fulker was married to Angela Elliott with whom he had one child, Rosanna, born in 1985 and a stepdaughter, Katherine. ==References==