Laurence Daniel Hurst (born 6 January 1965)[7] is a Professor of Evolutionary Genetics in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath[10] and the director of the Milner Centre for Evolution until April, 2024.

[24] His certificate of election to the Royal Society reads: Hurst is a leading authority on evolution of genetic systems.

He showed that the genetic code is adapted to minimise errors, synonymous mutations in mammals are under selection and gene order is non-random.

Hurst spearheaded novel approaches to evolutionary genetics deriving fitness from underlying biochemistry to predict the outcome of laboratory models.

[25]Hurst was awarded the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 2003,[13] and elected a member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2004.