Nevill Mott was a very important person. He was about my age. He was interested in similar things. As a matter of fact he had been interested mostly in collision phenomena and had written a very good book - I think it had already been written - about atomic collisions with Massey, and he and I got along famously. We went for walks together and occasionally for bicycle rides and we became very good friends. He was a theorist. I also became a good friend of Blackett but he was of... many years older than I, while Mott was my age and had very much... very congenial.

[Q] And your interest in Scattering of Relativistic Particles stems from this interaction with Mott, or intensifies?

Yes, I think that stems from this interaction, and on the other hand Mott then went into solid state theory, so we exchanged places more or less.

[Q] So socially Cambridge was a very important transition.

Socially it was very important. I was invited often to college dinners which were always very good. I stayed at a boarding house where the food was very bad, and so it was a happy time.

[Q] You already knew English?

I knew English... high school English. When I came to Cambridge people would understand me but I wouldn't understand anybody, and this continued for about a month. Then I went to a restaurant on one occasion where at the next table there were some Germans talking to each other and I couldn't understand them either, so I decided now I could understand English.