Because I'd taken a good biology course at school, I was allowed to go into the second year basic biology at Harvard, which was a botany course on lower organisms, cryptogrammic botany. And it was taught by a man names William H Weston, who I mentioned earlier. And he was just the most wonderful teacher I've ever encountered and he was a charming, sympathetic man. He just somehow rather took my intellectual heart; I took to him instantly. His lectures were just marvels and all extemporaneous, too. And he would… I remember the first lecture I went to with him. It was the first year that Radcliffe girls and Harvard boys could be in the same class. And I remember this so vividly because he was tall like you, but he was quite deaf and he had a box in his upper pocket. And so a girl in the back asked a question and he said, 'Wait a moment', and he unhooked his box and he took it in his hand. He went tearing down the aisle, and set the box in front of her on her desk where she was writing, and said, 'Would you repeat that question, my dear?' Of course, which captivated not only 'my dear' but everybody else in the room. And then, his answer was just so perfect. It was not condescending. It was not unsympathetic. It was just right.

[Q] So he was a big influence?

Very big influence, and what he's famous for was having lots of students who were working on algae, fungi, lower things, and since I started off working on algae, he gave me a bench space in a big, general lab with graduate students, which was great.