As was predicted at the beginning of the Human Genome Project, getting the sequence will be the easy part as only technical issues are involved. The hard part will be finding out what it means, because this poses intellectual problems of how to understand the participation of the genes in the functions of living cells.

Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order.

I lived at home and I cycled every morning to the railway station to travel by train to Johannesburg followed by a walk to the University, carrying sandwiches for my lunch and returning in the evening the same way.

There was still food rationing in England and life was difficult all through my 2 year stay in Oxford.

Innovation comes only from an assault on the unknown.

Living most of the time in a world created mostly in one's head, does not make for an easy passage in the real world.

I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code.