I took engineering at Cambridge. It... I went up in 1938 to Cambridge. Engineering was a bit of an accident. This is a sort of anecdote about how it came about, which is, sort of, entertaining in a way, I suppose. My grandfather was the head of a successful stockbroking company in the City and making quite a lot of money, and he had three daughters, none of whom could become stockbrokers, I mean in those days you had to be a male to be a stockbroker. And then he had this numerate grandson whom he supposed was going to join the firm and become very, very rich. And I can remember at the age - I think I must have been 16 or so - realising that whatever else I became it wasn't going to be a stockbroker. You've got to want to make money, you've got to be interested in money, and as far as I'm concerned, so long as you've got it, it's not interesting. I can remember, there was a big Sunday lunch, my grandfather at the head of the table and the rest of the family sitting around. And I remember foolishly announcing, at Sunday lunch, one Sunday, that I'd decided not to become a stockbroker. I should have been prepared. My grandfather was a nice old boy, I mean, he was a sweet guy. He said, 'Oh, well, boy, oh, well, what are you going to do then? Eh? What are you going to do?' And I hadn't thought about this, you understand, it never occurred to me to wonder. But I... the week before, at school, I'd been to a lecture by a chap, an engineer, who'd been in charge of the erection of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Very exciting, he said they'd built it from both sides, and it has what engineers call a male and female fitting, and they go, plunk, like that, when they meet, and so on. And this was very exciting, so I said, 'I'm going to be an engineer.' Of course, what else could I... I had to say something. And once you'd said something with my grandfather, you couldn't sort of shilly-shally and back down. And in any case, I had no idea you could earn your living being a biologist, it had simply never occurred to me as an option. I mean, Darwin hadn't earned his living as a biologist. I didn't know it was a profession you could pursue. So I said I was going to be an engineer, and then, I went to Cambridge to start engineering. I think, in normal times, I might have realised, when I got there, that perhaps something else was better, for me. But the war broke out.
[Q] The war broke out while you were in Cambridge.
Yes, the war broke out at the end of my first year.
[Q] Did that cut short the length of the degree course?
No, no, it was still a three year degree course, but it was very clear, if you were taking an engineering degree, you went on and finished it. And so I... I completed an engineering degree and then I went and designed aeroplanes between, what, '41 and '47 or so.
