In science, one often does experiments for the excitement of finding something, curiosity if you like to use the word, but you don’t necessarily have a practical end in mind. I firmly believe that in universities one should be doing blue skies research, research that is there because you want to find out more fundamentally about things in nature. These things that are discovered may have applications; they are very important, but, by and large, the applications, in my view, are better done by people in industry who are geared to applying what is known. It is a symbiotic thing and, of course, there is no such thing as a pure research, an applied research. As George Porter once said, there is pure science… no, there is applied science and not-yet applied science.

But the idea, I think, is encapsulated best by Derek Birchall. He was a very distinguished research scientist in ICI and Derek said, ‘Because of research which we are doing today, the future is not what it was’. You don’t know how you are changing the future by the curiosity-led research that you’re doing today.