I like teaching and the contact with young minds keeps one on one's toes.

Ever since I heard the news of the Royal Swedish Academy's decision, and even since arriving in Stockholm, with its flags flying and flames leaping, I have not been able to shake off a feeling of unreality.

I like teaching and the contact with young minds keeps one on one's toes, but increasing responsibilities have forced me to shed much of it in recent years.

However, by the standards of to-day, there were few challenges other than Advanced Latin Prose Composition in the 6th Form.

I did not feel a particularly strong call to any one subject, but read voraciously and widely and began to find science interesting.

I obtained a Nuffield Fellowship to work in J.D. Bernal's department in Birkbeck College in London and I moved there at the end of 1953.

This work made me more and more interested in biological matter, and I decided that I really wanted to work on the X-ray analysis of biological molecules.

I had now acquired a good knowledge of X-ray diffraction, not only through my own work, but through having helped James check the proofs of his fine book - The Optical Principles of the Diffraction of X-rays - still a standard work.

In a world where there are pressing problems, why doesn't one devote one's efforts to the practical benefits of mankind.