In 1947 I married Rowena Palmer, and we have two daughters, Alison and Claire, and a son, John.

We decided to leave a part of each and every excavated area exactly as we had found it, protecting the specimens from rain and excessive sun.

I had a great time investigating the pigments of different mutant fruit flies by following experimental protocols published in Scientific American, and I also remember making my own beetle collection when it was still acceptable...

I felt that in time simple stone tools would be found in early Pleistocene in England.

Now this really is something to put on the mantelpiece.

My life-long interest in astronomy started then and I still regularly use a telescope for astronomical observations, although very much as an amateur.

Keep your shop and your shop will keep you.

South Africa had a long record of studies in prehistory, going back to the end of the last century.

After an extensive interview he arranged for my weaknesses in foreign languages to be over-looked and so I started a Biology degree at Birmingham in 1967.

In 1959 the University recognized our work by appointing me to a new Chair of Radio Astronomy.

We explored about 180 miles of exposures, ranging from a depth of about 300 feet to 50 feet, before we undertook any major digging.

I have an idealistic view of science as a liberalising and progressive force for humanity.

I have examined the stomach contents of seven aardvarks.

She stops, pauses, turns to the left to glance at some possible threat or irregularity, and then continues to the north. This motion, so intensely human, transcends time.

My main efforts focussed on trying to identify the rate controlling steps during the cell cycle. Crucial for this analysis were wee mutants that were advanced prematurely through the cell cycle and so divided at...

As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God’s anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its...

The author knows just what he wants to illustrate and how he would like it to be done.

At age 11 in 1960, I moved to an academic state secondary school, Harrow County Grammar School for Boys.

We enjoy sailing small boats, two of which I have designed and built myself.

We set up the promised clinic for the sick and wounded Masai.

I met my wife Anne who was a sociology student, and her influence together with activities associated with the student movement of the time opened up my interests amongst other things into the theatre, art,...

I held a research fellowship at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and had been allowed to retain my rooms there while I was away in Africa.

The first money I ever earned was for drawing stone tools.

My parents were neither wealthy nor academic, but we lived comfortably and they were always extremely supportive of my academic efforts and aspirations, both at school and university.

The pretended physical philosophy of modern days strips Man of all his moral attributes, or holds them of no account in the estimate of his origin and place in the created world.

The crocodile was laid stomach upwards to be cut open. The stomach contents included bracelets, beads, necklaces, and indications of human meals.

At the end of the 1980s as a complete surprise my old Edinburgh friend, Ed Southern offered me the Chair of Microbiology at the University of Oxford.

In 1948 I was appointed to a Lectureship in Physics and in 1949 elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College.

When my father arrived in Kenya, he had found the Kikuyu way of life similar to that of the British at the time the Romans invaded England 2,000 years ago.

I think it was this curiosity about the natural world which awoke my early interest in science.

I kept an open mind on the question of whether a hominid had been present in Europe in the early Pleistocene.

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

My time as an undergraduate at Birmingham was extremely stimulating both as a biologist and also for my more general intellectual development.

A cold atheistical materialism is the tendency of the so-called material philosophy of the present day.

The Dalmatian breed of dog has many primitive characteristics.

Better understanding of the natural world not only enhances all of us as human beings, but can also be harnessed for the better good, leading to improved health and quality of life.

I put a bullet into the back of the crocodile’s neck just behind the head, thus killing it. If a crocodile is hit in any other part of its anatomy it disappears into the water...

Basically, I have been compelled by curiosity.

I was never very good at exams, having a poor memory and finding the examination process rather artificial, and there never seemed to be enough time to follow up things that really interested me.

I saw what looked like another fallen tree in front of me and put my foot on it to cross over. At that moment it reared up in front of me-the biggest python I had...

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

Scientific understanding is often beautiful, a profoundly aesthetic experience which gives pleasure not unlike the reading of a great poem.

The violence in the world comes about because we human beings are forever creating barriers between men who are like us and men who are not like us.

The Foxhall jaw has now been missing for many years.

During the winter my attention was attracted to the changes in the stars and planets in the sky.

Although we followed that hyena for the best part of half an hour, we never caught up with it.

I dug things up. I was curious. I liked to draw what I found.

In fact I am very much an experimentalist and an empiricist, so it would have been a major mistake for me to have abandoned this type of work.

I withdrew my support for the validity of the evidence for early Pleistocene Stone Age tools in Europe on the grounds of not proven.

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.