Davenport was a very, very friendly and delightful person to work with. He was like Hans Bethe, he always had problems that were just very well suited to the student. He could tell somehow, he had this intuition that a particular student could do something that wasn't too difficult and so almost everybody got interesting things to do which they could actually finish, which is a great gift.

[Q] And the initial contact with Davenport came about how?

It was purely just because I happened to be at these seminars at Birkbeck College where he came and, so it was quite accidental and I don't think there was any planning involved, but we immediately took to each other and, well, Davenport was a very generous fellow and it just worked out. And it was the same thing with Hans Bethe, there just are a few people like that who just have a wonderful inexhaustible supply of problems, which is what students need in order to get started.