His interest in embryology led him to take his PhD at the California Institute of Technology in 1958[2] where he studied alongside Howard Temin in the laboratory of Renato Dulbecco.
[3] Based on earlier observations on the mutation frequencies of the bacteriophage T4, Drake in the early 1960s began to study the biochemical activities of the T4 polymerase.
It significantly influenced research direction, regulatory procedures and mutagenicity testing within industry within the United States and internationally.
As editor-in-chief of GENETICS from 1982 to 1996, Jan Drake helped to make the journal a first-choice for scientific publications from all over the world.
In the last years of his academic and scientific career, John W. Drake headed the Spontaneous Mutation and DNA Repair Group within the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.