Postscript 20th November 2007

0:09:07 Luck at being an early entrant to subject of ethology; it insisted you always start with description, that you must study the behaviour of animals in their natural environment, that you must ask four questions: causal, developmental, functional, evolutionary (demonstrated with thumb); this came into collision with a group in the American Natural History Museum led by Schneirla who had a pupil, Daniel Lehrman, who wrote a vicious attack on ethology; we tended to picture Danny Lehrman as an ogre until he came across to Europe and talked with us; turned out to be an absolutely charming man; eventually led to a rapprochement between comparative psychology studied in the US and ethology as studied here; regret that I paid too little attention to the functional question which has become the centre of behaviour studies in recent years largely due to the work of W.D. Hamilton; very exciting to study the courtship of finches, for example, and argue from that how the displays evolved and what the relations between the different species were

4:27:10 Then moving into mother-child relations was a very exciting time as I felt I was doing something that might make a real difference in the world; also gave me a chance to get into the primate fieldwork; I was the only person who knew about non-human primates in this country at the time; role in teaching Jane Goodall was how to make precise recordings in the field which I had learnt by studying captive monkeys; then got involved in pre-school behaviour reflecting work of John Bowlby; led on to studying human relationships; at that time no science of human relationships only of human interactions; now a flourishing branch of psychology; tried to set up a scientific framework based on observation and analysis for studying all the complexities of human relations; thoughts on Desmond Morris; after this worked on religion and morality

9:13:04 I have never had to take any decisions in my life; had the choice of being a B.O.A.C. pilot or an undergraduate but fear of tutor [dislike of living out of suitcases RH] decided the latter; failed to get a demonstratorship in psychology; only other decision I have had to take was whether to let my name go forward as biological secretary of the Royal Society; decided against getting involved in administration to allow me to continue with research; wonderful to have had a Royal Society Professorship as it gave room to follow my interests; also lucky with my mentors like David Lack, Niko Tinbergen, Bill Thorpe; in the 1950's met Gabriel Horn and we edited a book together called 'Short Term Changes in Neural Activity and Behaviour'; think we met through a seminar run by Thorpe and Zangwill, Professor of Psychology, which was an effort to break disciplinary boundaries; Gabriel and I ran a conference and one of the Dutch participants gave us a bottle of geneva which we drank as we edited the manuscripts; Gabriel, Danny Lehrman and Jay Rosenblatt, also from the American Museum of Natural History, have been my three closest male friends; lucky in my second marriage to Joan Stevenson as she is also a psychologist and brought a new perspective to my work; Frank Beach, Professor of Psychology at Newhaven, wonderful man and very kind to me; Ernst Mayr, the biologist, with whom I did a paper; Danny Lehrman and Jay Rosenblatt, the latter became a psychoanalyst who continued also as an animal behaviourist

16:42:05 Have had some wonderful students; started with Pat Bateson who took up the study of imprinting; for some time he was director of the sub-department of animal behaviour at Madingley and I was director of the Medical Research Council Unit for the Development and Integration of Behaviour within that sub-department; Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, two very remarkable women; Peter Marler and John Crook were both students of Bill Thorpes at Madingley though I supervised Peter Marler for a while; John Crook underrated as he really made a breakthrough in behavioural ecology through a comparative study of weaver birds showing the relation between their life history and their nesting habits; he went to Bristol as a lecturer and then got more interested in Zen; later students include Richard Wrangham, now professor at Harvard; Dorothy and Robert Seyfarth, now at Pennsylvania; Sandy Harcourt and Kelly Stewart who studied gorilla, in Dian Fossey's camp

20:47:11 A question I sometimes ask myself is do I have any regrets about my academic career; I spent a lot of time doing things that were tremendous fun but were they really doing any good to the human race; studying canary and finch courtship don't see that the human race is much better for it though I sometimes kid myself that any advance in science is worthwhile; it is for that reason that I have turned more and more in the last thirty years towards studies of aggression and war and how to stop it, and religion and ethics; I sometimes kid myself that it is some use; I am very lucky to have got involved in Pugwash, an organization primarily of scientists which by maintaining an impeccable reputation is able to influence governments; that sort of meets everything I want to do

22:28:07 Advice to student to always do something you passionately want to find out about; no good being set a particular problem; own experience with David Lack wanting me  to work on the comparative behaviour of corvids but allowing me to follow my own interest instead; have always tried to do the same with students although Pat Bateson was a bit of an exception in following my work on imprinting; there is nothing more dreary than the mechanics of research; I spent five or six winters on my knees in a cold , draughty wooden bird room recording how often a chaffinch chinked when I put an owl in front of it; did try to give fieldworkers good preparation before they went out to the field and most practised recording techniques with our captive monkeys