Have you ever wondered what the 5th floor Flowers building geriatric (his own word!) was up to?
This is your chance to find out in a 1960s style seminar—no power points, no slides.
The 1960s—a pint of bitter cost 1s 10d (about 9p in decimal currency), Cheapest cinema tickets were 2s 6d (12 1/2p post decimalisation)—but proximity to the screen resulted in a stiff neck, toilet paper was the hard variety, real coffee was a rarity—just odd tasting early version of Nescafe, tea came as leaves, not bags, telephones were run by the post office, non-local telephone calls were called ‘trunk calls’ and had to be connected by the operator, international calls had to be booked 24 hours in advance, food was grim—oxtail soup and sprouts cooked to the point of decomposition were common but for about a fortnight in summer delicious French peaches were available at three for a shilling (5p), central heating in houses was rare and heating was commonly by coal fires—when you were close enough to get warm, your shoes started to burn, an economy still suffering from the war so in 1967 after large-scale selling, sterling was devalued and exchange controls introduced—£50 in any combination of foreign currency, sterling and travellers’ cheques was the maximum amount allowed to take abroad. It was entered into passports at banks and checked by immigration officers on departure. To keep morale up, ‘I’m backing Britain’ badges were issued. At least four copies of a thesis were required, typed using a typewriter and carbon paper. Shortly after decimalisation , second class post was introduced—3p for first class letters and 2 ½ p for second. But at least England won the World Cup!
From Herb’s time in Cambridge and Paris and as he is old enough to have known and interacted with a number of the people who played seminal roles in creating and developing molecular biology, so before discussing his own work, he’ll tell you a bit, scientific and otherwise, about Sydney Brenner, Francis Crick, Max Perutz, Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob. Finally, Herb will tell a bit about the fungus he worked with, why it is a good model organism and how 1960s style classical genetics can answer questions that no one thought to ask. His recent work is designed to help elucidate the role of an evolutionarily conserved structure, the Golgi Associated Retrograde Protein complex, possibly shedding light on the basis for some neurological disease.
A significant portion of this talk will be accessible to a general (non-scientific) audience.