I was born on September 27, 1918, the second of five children.

To save an animal’s life in order that it may suffer indefinitely is something I would never condone.

I felt strongly that since the pursuit of good science was so difficult it was essential that the problem being studied was an important one to justify the effort expanded.

Eloquent testimony to the recovery powers of wild animals frequently becomes apparent from the study of skeletons housed in museums.

I’d rather be in a tent than in a house.

Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology...

Sometime during the many millions of years that have elapsed since mammalian faunas came into existence, some sort of island crossed from West Africa to South America.

Nature’s laws must be obeyed, and the period of decline begins, and goes on with accelerated rapidity.

This time at Birmingham turned me into a general biologist, and ever since then I have always tried to take a biological approach to any research project that I have undertaken.

I was educated at Bradfield College and Oxford, where I graduated in 1939.

Tracing the paintings was often complicated because of high winds and by the difficulties of getting within reach of the paintings.

I gradually slipped away from religion over several years and became an atheist or to be more philosophically correct, a sceptical agnostic.

Far too often animals are put to sleep when they could be saved through proper care and nursing.

No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely.

My 6 years with Murdoch were pivotal for my entire research career.

Sometimes string figures were used to illustrate stories, as in the case of an Eskimo example that depicts a man catching a salmon. Sometimes they had magic or religious significance.

A key issue in developmental biology at that time was the problem of how cells underwent differentiation, with most workers concentrating on explanations in terms of changes in enzyme and gene regulation.

My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur.

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.