in chemistry and physics from Harvard in 1963, and was then a Henry fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge.

His wide-ranging studies of protein structure have contributed insights to viral architecture, DNA–protein recognition, and cellular signaling.

[9] He led the Structural Biology team at the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) when it received National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funding [10] of around $300 million to address key immunological roadblocks to HIV vaccine development and to design, develop and test novel HIV vaccine candidates.

Harrison has been married to Tomas Kirchhausen, who is currently a Professor at Harvard Medical School,[18] since 2013.

In the fall of 1979, Tom moved to Cambridge, MA, to work with Harrison, and the two have been in a relationship ever since.