As an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh in the early 1960s, Keith Moffat studied physics. "Physics, physics, and more physics," he says. But when it came time to graduate, Moffat was looking to expand his horizons. Bill Cochran, a new professor who'd just arrived from Cambridge, suggested he get in touch with the molecular biologists there: "Francis Crick, Max Perutz, John Kendrew, folks like that," he recalls.
"So I wrote a letter asking for a brochure that would tell me the type of research going on," says Moffat. Perutz himself sent back a one-line note asking for two references. With references dispatched, Perutz's next missive, equally brief, said "come for a visit." To make the most of his time, Moffat arranged to meet with the classical physicists at the Cavendish Laboratory in the morning, and the biophysics crowd at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the ...
