
After his first degree in Biochemistry at the University of York, Dale studied for a PhD with the late John Holbrook in Bristol on site-directed mutagenesis of lactate dehydrogenase. During his first post-doc at Leicester, Dale became interested in DNA gyrase and moved to York as a SERC Fellow to work on the crystal structure of the protein. Dale was appointed Lecturer in Molecular Biophysics in Oxford in 1993 and a Reader in 1997. In 2000, Dale moved to the CRUK Clare Hall Laboratories but in 2010 moved to the Institute of Cancer Research in London where he is now Joint Section Head of Structural Biology.