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.
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.
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.
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.
People who get Nobel prizes aren’t necessarily the most imaginative of people. People who sometimes find a system, develop a system, do very useful work.
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.
