A career in biophysics

Abstract

My career in science started with my PhD under Professor Darcy Gilmour at the University of Sydney. I quickly learned his iconoclastic ways and completed the degree in early 1969 in just over three years. Professor Charles Birch was the Head of Zoology and had been watching my progress and offered me a position as Lecturer as soon as my PhD was submitted. He asked me to set up a new course on invertebrate physiology, and the salary enabled me to afford the airfare to San Francisco for my family. In December 1969, I headed to the University of California San Francisco to work with Manuel Morales in the renowned Cardiovascular Research Institute headed by Julius Comroe (1965), the author of the textbook of pulmonary physiology, The Lung. I had a great time there meeting many important scientists that I had only read about, including Setsuro Ebashi, Andrew Huxley, Fumio Oosawa and Bernard Katz who had just won his Nobel Prize. It was inspiring. For the next two and a half years, I immersed myself in fluorescence polarisation spectroscopy, and rubbed up against with some of the best minds in the muscle field including Roger Cooke. Manuel Morales sent Roger to collect this Aussie and his family, and we have remained friends ever since.