Fellows and Foreign Members of The Royal Society are elected for life on the basis of scientific excellence; those elected have included Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein, Dorothy Hodgkin, Francis Crick, James Watson and Stephen Hawking. Today there are approximately 1,500 Fellows and Foreign Members, including more than 70 Nobel Laureates.  The Society has three roles: it is the UK academy of science promoting the natural and applied sciences and representing British scientists; a learned society publishing eight peer-reviewed journals, bestowing awards, and hosting events; and a funding agency supporting postdoctoral fellows, professor, and grants to more the 3,000 scientists.

Chory is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Howard H. and Maryam R. Newman Chair professor and director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

She pioneered the analysis of plant responses to their environment using a molecular genetic approach in Arabidopsis.  Her laboratory has led the plant field for 20 years, making major discoveries in how plants grow and develop. Chory elucidated how plants perceive light; identified how chloroplasts signal to the nucleus; and defined a novel pathway for the biosynthesis of the plant hormone auxin. She also discovered a novel steroid hormone in plants, identified the steroid receptor and elegantly dissected the signaling network.

Among Chory's many honors is election to membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1999 and ASPB's Charles Albert Shull Award for young investigators in 1995.  She is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences and the French Académie des Sciences.