Getting into the mind of a worm--a personal view.

Ever since I can remember, I liked to take things to bits to see how they work. My parents thought that this trait was not to be encouraged when applied to living animals, so diverted my attention to things mechanical and electronic. I was given the use of a shed in the garden. This became my beloved workshop where I made bombs, rockets, and radios. After one of my bombs caused a local scare, my activities were restricted to electronics. On finishing school, I worked in a factory for a time and then progressed onto a couple of other jobs in industrial development labs on the basis of my self-taught skills in electronics. Eventually, I got a job as an electronics technician in the Medical Research Council's labs in Mill Hill (MRC National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London, UK). It was here that I got my first (ethical) exposure to biology. I developed a voltage clamp apparatus for neurophysiological research, a project that piqued my curiosity about nervous systems. I also developed a computer system for displaying 3D images of molecular structures. The MRC encouraged and supported me to study for a physics degree at Brunel University. However, after I graduated in 1969, there seemed no good career path where I could pursue my developing interest in computers in the lab where I was working, so I sought and obtained a job offer from industry. However, my boss at the MRC Mill Hill lab encouraged me to check out the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge where he had heard there was a new research initiative to use computers to study the nervous system of a worm. So, mainly out of a sense of duty to the MRC for having supported me though my undergraduate studies, I donned my best (and only) suit and headed off to Cambridge.