By the time I was 12 or 13, I was studying biochemistry textbooks.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Later in the fifties I got involved in kinetic studies using my long forgotten math background.
From an early age, I knew I would become a scientist. It may have been my brother Sam's doing. He interested me in the laws of falling bodies when I was ten and helped my father equip a basement chemistry lab for me when I was fifteen. I became skilled in the synthesis of selenium halides.
Plus, I was a math and science whiz from my first introduction to the subjects.
In the fall of 1961, I went up to Clare College Cambridge to read Natural Sciences, with the intention of becoming a biochemist in the end.
By then, I was making the slow transition from classical biochemistry to molecular biology and becoming increasingly preoccupied with how genes act and how proteins are made.
At the time I finished high school, I was determined to study biology, deeply convinced to eventually be a researcher.
I was in the military, and then I went to university to study biology.
Everything I did in high school was focused on microbiology, looking at things like algae under a microscope for hours on end. When I was 13, I saved up $100 to buy a good used microscope. I was obsessed with microorganisms.
By the time I was 12, I was reading my parents' books because there weren't teenage books then.
When high school students ask to spend their afternoons and weekends in my laboratory, I am amazed: I didn't develop that kind of enthusiasm for science until I was 28 years old.