By their independence, by their rigorous work, the Nobel Committees have given the Prize a unique position and prestige.
Cambridge was the place for someone from the Colonies or the Dominions to go on to, and it was to the Cavendish Laboratory that one went to do physics.
During this time, I developed a strong interest, broadly speaking, in the structure of matter, and how it was organised.
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.
However, by the standards of to-day, there were few challenges other than Advanced Latin Prose Composition in the 6th Form.
However, I felt the lack of a deeper foundation, and moved to chemistry and this in turn led me to physics and mathematics.
However, I should perhaps add that during the 20 years I have been back in Cambridge, I have been actively involved in the teaching of undergraduates, as well as of course supervising research students.
Human curiosity, the urge to know, is a powerful force and is perhaps the best secret weapon of all in the struggle to unravel the workings of the natural world.
I am still a Director of Studies in Natural Science at my College, Peterhouse, and under the tutorial or - as it is called in Cambridge - supervision, system, I teach undergraduates myself.
I did not feel a particularly strong call to any one subject, but read voraciously and widely and began to find science interesting.
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.
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.
I like teaching and the contact with young minds keeps one on one's toes.
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.
I was lucky to find as Professor there, R.W. James, the X-ray crystallographer, who had brought to Cape Town the traditions of the Bragg school at Manchester.
In a world where there are pressing problems, why doesn't one devote one's efforts to the practical benefits of mankind.
In the course of my stay there, I also showed how one could analyse the experimental kinetic curves for the reaction of haemoglobin with carbon dioxide or oxygen by simulations in the computer, and so fit the rate constants.
It was the book called Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif, well known in its time, which influenced me to begin medicine at university as a way into microbiology.
My father was trained as a saddler, but in fact as a young man worked in his father's business of rearing and selling cattle, so he grew up in the countryside.
One cannot plan for the unexpected.
Rosalind Franklin died in 1958 and, supported by an N.I.H. grant, Finch, Holmes and I continued the work on viruses, now extended to spherical viruses.
Shortly after I was born he emigrated to Durban, where members of my mother's family had settled at the turn of the century, and the rest of the family followed soon thereafter.
Supported by an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship and also by a research studentship to Trinity College, I went to Cambridge in 1949.
The philosophy of the school was quite simple - the bright boys specialised in Latin, the not so bright in science and the rest managed with geography or the like.
The work requires a moderately large investment in technological and theoretical developments and long periods of time to carry them out, without the pressure to achieve quick or short term results.
This field is not necessarily glamorous, nor does it often produce immediate results, but it seeks to increase our basic understanding of living processes.
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.
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