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After gaining a BA and MPhil at the University of Nottingham, and a stint at Cornell University in the USA, Iain Boyd Whyte pursued his doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge. A DAAD pre-doctoral studentship funded a year of study in the then West Berlin, which had a lasting impact on his subsequent research interests and academic career. An early indication of his interest in German history and culture was the award, subsequent to the PhD, of an MA with distinction in German at the University of Leeds. A fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and a Getty Scholar, he taught from 1988 to 2020 in the School of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, with several interruptions for fellowships and secondments to institutions in the USA, including the Getty Foundation, Northwestern University, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, where he was Kress Professor in 2015-2016. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and chaired the Sectional Committee on Arts and Humanities (1999-2002 and 2018-2021). As a Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland he chaired the Architectural Selection Committee and Design Jury for the £28m Playfair Project (1999-2000). From 2008 to 2010 he was Vice President of the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art, and from 2010 to 2016 served as chair of RIHA, the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art. Committed to the importance of translation in the arts and humanities, and a practising translator himself, Whyte founded the journal Art in Translation in 2009 with generous funding from the Getty Foundation. Rowed number 3 for the Jesus College Boat Club in the 1970s and later became a coach.