By the time I had... the war... the war had broken out and I had finished my studies, I had decided that what I wanted most to do in life was to solve... elucidate the mechanism of action of insulin on the liver. That was what I was going to do. And I had come to the conclusion that I would never be able to solve this problem with the kind of simple methods that were used in the physiology lab. Just injecting glucose, measuring the blood sugar level, was never going to get me anywhere; what I needed was biochemistry. Biochemistry was very poor at the university... not... not poor, but there was no biochemistry in the kind of field I wanted to go into. The French-speaking Professor of Biochemistry was an organic chemist and in the Flemish part he was a physical chemist, but there was nobody interested in metabolism. In any case, I felt that before I specialised in biochemistry I had to learn chemistry, and so what I decided, in 1941, was that I would study chemistry. I should go back to school and study chemistry, but in the meantime I had to make a living. And that's how I went to see my professor and told him what I wanted to do, and he said, 'You can't do that; you'd better get a job as an assistant at the hospital.' There were two positions available: one in internal medicine and the other in the cancer institute. I first went to the Professor of Internal Medicine because I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the... the Professor... Head of the Cancer Institute. So I had been a good student... not very good, because I'd spent too much time in the lab and too much time – I didn't mention that – playing cards. And then... when the Professor of Internal Medicine was going to give me the job, I told him that I should mention that I'm going to study chemistry at the same time. So he looked at me and said, 'Listen, I need an assistant; I don't need a chemical student. So goodbye.'