At first, I was able to use a Bunsen burner attached to my mother's gas stove, but the use of the kitchen as a laboratory came to an abrupt end when a minor explosion involving hydrogen sulphide spattered the newly painted decor and changed the colour from blue to dirty green!
After qualifying for a B.Sc. in pharmacology, I spent a few months in Sheffield University as a research worker in the pharmacology department but then went back to Oxford to the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research in order to study for a D. Phil. with Dr. Geoffrey Dawes.
The medicines of today are based upon thousands of years of knowledge accumulated from folklore, serendipity and scientific discovery. The new medicines of tomorrow will be based on the discoveries that are being made now, arising from basic research in laboratories around the world.
Ways have to be found to maintain university research untramelled by requirements of forecasting application or usefulness.
Plainly, when perfusate from an organ or blood from an animal is used for superfusion, substances can reach the assay tissues within a few seconds of generation or release.
Physiology has spawned many biological sciences, amongst them my own field of pharmacology.
It is sometimes said that the major discoveries have already been made and that there is nothing important left to find. This attitude is altogether too pessimistic. There are plenty of ideas and plenty of things left to discover. The trick is to find the right path from one to the other.
Fundamental discoveries can and should be made in industry or academies, but to carry that knowledge forward and to develop a new drug to the market has to depend on the resources of industry.
Most uses of bioassay involving smooth muscle demand high sensitivity and specificity.
Mammalian cells of all types disgorge prostaglandins at the slightest provocation, but the tissue content of prostaglandins is very low compared with the release.
At the age of 12, my parents gave me a chemistry set for Christmas, and experimentation soon became a consuming passion in my life.
We lived in a suburb of Birmingham where I attended the local state school from the age of five. I then went on to King Edward VI High School in Edgbaston, Birmingham.
