I sometimes say I am the extinguished professor, because what I'd really like to be is the postdoc, to have that kind of thinking. I think one can get very set in his ways with titles like 'distinguished professor.'
Today, the Americans have developed a new culture in science based on the slavery of graduate students. Now, graduate students of American institutions are afraid... He's got to perform. The post-doc is an indentured labourer.
The moment I saw the model and heard about the complementing base pairs I realized that it was the key to understanding all the problems in biology we had found intractable - it was the birth of molecular biology.
I lived at home and I cycled every morning to the railway station to travel by train to Johannesburg followed by a walk to the University, carrying sandwiches for my lunch and returning in the evening the same way.
I went in with Jack and Leslie, into this room that was lined with brick, and there on the side I can remember very clearly was this small model with plates for the bases - the original model with everything screwed together.
I completed the first three years of primary school in one year and was admitted to the local school the age of six directly into the fourth year, some two years younger than all my contemporaries.
I also became interested in chemistry and gradually accumulated enough test tubes and other glassware to do chemical experiments, using small quantities of chemicals purchased from a pharmacy supply house.
There was still food rationing in England and life was difficult all through my 2 year stay in Oxford.
During this period, I became interested in how the new techniques of cloning and sequencing DNA could influence the study of genetics and I was an early and active proponent of the Human Genome Sequencing Project.
