Hal Dixon interviewed by Alan Macfarlane, 3rd August 2007

http://www.bioc.cam.ac.uk/uto/dixon.html

0:09:07 Born in Dublin in 1928; most notable ancestor was Charles Bush, a member of the Irish Parliament when the British Government forced through the Act of Union, which he opposed; later Lord Chief Justice of Ireland; father held the chair of Botany in Trinity, Dublin; main work on describing how water gets up tall trees; my parents had been married for twenty-one years when I was born so brothers much older; one brother was a neurologist, the other, Kendall, was a Fellow at King's; I probably chose biochemistry by seeing some of Kendall's books; mother born in 1881; her father became Secretary of the Irish Land Commission

5:35:16 First went to day school near house, later to a boarding prep school in North Dublin; went to St Columba's where I didn't settle and went instead to Shrewsbury; influenced by two chemists, Phillips and Larkin, and especially by Frank Macarthy who was a biologist; had become interested in sciences at prep school where best friend, Peter Schwarz, became an organic chemist at Edinburgh; enjoyed physics and chemistry and found relevant books at home

9:49:05 Applied to King's for a major scholarship; Donald Beves senior tutor at the time; suggestion that he was a spy rejected by Kendall; did play bridge with him; King's then a much smaller fellowship; A.C. Pigou, the economist, enjoyed his reputation for misogyny, and on engagement received letter with a cheque to buy a crash helmet; read chemistry, physics and physiology for the first year, then did both biochemistry and chemistry over four years for part two; biochemistry was a tiny subject with no supervisions but encouraged to talk with the staff; about twenty students at that time

17:07:22 Had been interested in Frank Young's lectures on hormones, particularly insulin, so became his research student; he got money for work on treatment of rheumatoid arthritis; Fred Sanger was my official supervisor; the research failed to produce a solution although present steroids in some way replicate hormones; Sanger thought very clearly, introduced working methods and knew when to drop them; PhD took about four years then got a demonstratorship in the Department of Biochemistry in 1954; got a Junior Research Fellowship at King's just before that; Shepard was Provost at that time; older scientists were frustrated by him as they didn't think he gave science enough weight among fellowship electors; he was a classicist and popularized the Greek play

23:51:15 Own work on protein chemistry; classification and naming; served on the editorial board of the 'Biochemical Journal' for seven years; Nomenclature Committee

30:09:23 Interest in Russia began through observation by Brian Hartley that no one in the department could speak Russian; bought a 'teach yourself' book the next day and enjoyed learning it; pressed by Frank Young to go to Russia and went to Moscow to The Institute for Physical Chemistry and Radiation Laboratory (later Institute for Molecular Biology) for eight months 1964-5; timing was good as Stalin had been dead long enough for a lot of liberalization to have occurred; when Khrushchev fell support for Lysenko faded and one could learn real biology; two years later things closed up again had had to wait for glasnost twenty-five years later; facilities were not good but the lab technicians were usually very skilled and could make things for you; getting beakers or reagents which were only available commercially abroad was very difficult

36:45:03 In exchange Evgeny Severin came to King's during 1968; did not feel that we were being spied on; did not drop relations even before glasnost; Russians usually got permission to go abroad for conferences; closest friend and colleague was told by KGB not to cultivate a friendship with an American couple which he refused to do so did not get permission to travel abroad 

41:08:22 When a research student had a Durham Fund grant from King's to go to America, but otherwise have only taken short visits for conferences; work usually done in small groups but no really close collaborators; usually had two research students at any one time; enjoyed teaching; research work on copper; aided work of John Walsh on Wilson's disease

47:34:16 Value of Cambridge for academic research is to be thrown together with people whose subject isn't one's own but is close to it; think the supervision system is very important and should