Peter Bretscher, University of Saskatchewan
Microbiology and Immunology
Professor
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
peter.bretscher@usask.ca
Office:
(306) 966-4322
Expert In
Bio/Research
I, as many, liked the world of ideas from when I was small. I read some philosophical books in my early teens, mainly by Bertrand Russell, but came to the belief that studying physics could provide better opportunities to appreciate and come close to beauty in nature.
I studied physics w...
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I studied physics w...
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Bio/Research
I, as many, liked the world of ideas from when I was small. I read some philosophical books in my early teens, mainly by Bertrand Russell, but came to the belief that studying physics could provide better opportunities to appreciate and come close to beauty in nature.
I studied physics whilst at Gonville and Caius, College, Cambridge, from 1961-1964, as an undergraduate. I found the experience frustrating as there was not enough time for me to understand and appreciate the vast amount of material. I felt I could not do justice to my aspirations or the subject.
I knew I wanted to be in a field where I could try to make some significant conceptual contributions and hopefully do some related experiments. I had little confidence I could achieve this in physics. I was very interested in theory. The particular field did not seem so important to me, but rather the approach one took in an attempt to make progress. I was very fortunate. My brother, Mark, who had trained as an organic chemist, was doing his PhD under the guidance of Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick in the area of protein synthesis and the genetic code, in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, England . I was accepted to do graduate studies at the same laboratory with John Kendrew, who already had his Nobel Prize for the structure of myoglobin. My graduate studies were to be in the field of protein Xray crystallography.
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I studied physics whilst at Gonville and Caius, College, Cambridge, from 1961-1964, as an undergraduate. I found the experience frustrating as there was not enough time for me to understand and appreciate the vast amount of material. I felt I could not do justice to my aspirations or the subject.
I knew I wanted to be in a field where I could try to make some significant conceptual contributions and hopefully do some related experiments. I had little confidence I could achieve this in physics. I was very interested in theory. The particular field did not seem so important to me, but rather the approach one took in an attempt to make progress. I was very fortunate. My brother, Mark, who had trained as an organic chemist, was doing his PhD under the guidance of Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick in the area of protein synthesis and the genetic code, in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, England . I was accepted to do graduate studies at the same laboratory with John Kendrew, who already had his Nobel Prize for the structure of myoglobin. My graduate studies were to be in the field of protein Xray crystallography.
Click to Shrink <<