How I became a biochemist

A question some of my colleagues might ask, especially some of those I knew at Birmingham early in my career, would be ‘‘Did you ever become a biochemist?’’ Nowadays even the experimentalists seem to spend most of their day sitting in front of a keyboard, but 40 years ago anyone who was mainly seen preparing punched cards and studying the computer output they generated was not to be taken seriously as a biochemist, or even as an enzymologist. However, accepting that I have become a biochemist, how did it happen? I cannot claim that it was a lifelong ambition or that I never wanted to be anything else; it was more the result of some very good advice, some excellent teachers, and some good choices made on the basis of their recommendations. I had no family background in science. My father had wanted to be an engineer, but his own father thought otherwise: unable to go into the Navy himself on account of poor health, he was determined that both of his sons should follow their grandfather and great grandfather into the Navy; and so they did. My uncle did not survive the War, and my father devoted most of his working life to a job that he had not chosen. Fortunately, he had no wish to repeat the same error with his own son, and accepted that what I wanted to be, from the age of about 10, was a chemist. At my preparatory school there was no science teaching, but when I was able to take chemistry and physics at Shrewsbury School I did not hesitate. This was the same school that Charles Darwin had attended a century and a half before me, but whereas he thought had learned nothing there I had some gifted teachers and I learned a great deal, especially from Peter Hughes, who is still teaching chemistry half a century later at Westminster School. I learned while writing this article that my first day of learning chemistry was also his first day of teaching it. It was doubtless obvious that I had not done any chemistry before, but it was not at all obvious that he had not done any teaching before. I did not start biology immediately, and as far as I recall it was not possible to start biology without 2 years of chemistry and physics. (As for biochemistry, I did not know that such a subject existed.) When I did start biology I enjoyed it, but I was not very impressed, as I had the physicist’s attitude that biology was not a real science. After my first term of biology, the teacher wrote in my report ‘‘he is not a great performer, but he plods along"—only to have the embarrassment of having to mark me among the first in the class on the basis of the exam that followed the writing of the report. Afterwards he took my participation in biology classes more seriously, and accepted that total incompetence for recognizing, let alone dissecting, the afferent branchial arteries of a dogfish did not necessarily exclude me from decent society. I have no recollection of being taught anything about natural selection at Darwin’s school: he was respected as a distinguished alumnus, but not, I think, remembered for his life’s work. If my recollection is right (as it may not be) then it has Address correspondence to: Athel Cornish-Bowden, CNRS-BIP, 31 Chemin Joseph-Aiguier, B.P. 71, 13402 Marseille Cedex 20, France. E-mail: acornish@ifr88.cnrs-mrs.fr Received 31 August 2009; accepted 31 August 2009