[21][24][25][26][27][28][29] Chothia was educated at Alleyn's School,[20] then went to study at Durham University graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1965.

With Julian Gough[14] he created the Superfamily database[39] which uses Hidden Markov models to identify protein sequences that are related to those of known structures.

During his career, Chothia supervised 19 successful PhD students to completion[40] including Alex Bateman,[6] Steven E. Brenner,[10] Mark Bender Gerstein,[11] Julian Gough,[13] Sarah Teichmann,[15] Bissan Al-Lazikani,[41][42][43] Goga Apic,[44] Samantha Barré[citation needed][45] Matthew Bashton,[46][47][48][49] Dan Bolser,[50] Michael Bremang,[51] Bernard de Bono,[52][53] Emma Ganley (née Hill),[54][55][56] Martin Madera,[57][58] Siarhei Maslau,[59] Susan Miller,[60][61][62] Jong Park (aka Jong Bhak),[63][64][65] Rajkumar Sasidharan,[66][67] and Christine Vogel.

[18] His certificate of election and candidature reads: Dr Chothia has shown how the amino sequences of proteins determine their structure, function and evolution.

He has helped us to understand how their apparently limited set of slightly different structures allow immunoglobin to recognise an almost limitless variety of different antigens.