Jeremy Sanders interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 22nd September 2009

0:05:07 Born in London in 1948; my parents were both born in London of immigrant families; my grandparents were either born in London, or in Poland, Lithuania or Ukraine; those families migrated to London to escape Jewish persecution around the turn of the twentieth century; my paternal grandfather arrived in 1912 but all the others had arrived before then; both of my parents grew up in East London in a Jewish community; they were both very clever but had to leave school at fourteen to go out to work because of the financial situation; my mother's father was a tailor and until the Second World War he was hired on a daily basis, so in and out of work; thus the background of my family was financially insecure; both my parents had the potential to go to university but they did not even have the opportunity of matriculating from school; they met as teenagers and married at the age of nineteen in 1941; almost immediately my father was conscripted into the Royal Air Force; when he took aptitude tests they discovered he was rather more intelligent than his background would suggest  so he was trained as a radio technician; he still has his notebooks from Bolton Technical College for 1943 showing atomic structure and how electrical circuits work; he spent much of the War in the Middle East, India and Ceylon, repairing radios, teaching himself music; he became the editor of the squadron magazine; my mother stayed at home in London; her father was the most educated of his siblings; he became a Labour councillor and in the early 1960s he was the Mayor of Shoreditch; he was terribly proud of being the chairman of the library committee; the family background was one where education and learning were revered

4:39:12 When I was growing up my parents were very keen on education which they saw as the way out of relative poverty; they were great believers in knowledge for the sake of knowledge; if I asked a question for which they did not know the answer, they would either look at a book or we would go to the library; they were very humane, both deeply committed socialists; they were very keen on music though passively rather than actively as they had had no opportunity to learn, and we listened to the then Third Programme; I would do my homework at the kitchen table listening; my mother read a lot of novels and biographies; she was the cement of the family and did a lot of entertaining every weekend; she died at sixty-one, a relatively young age; she was very warm with high expectations, but not pressured; my father is still alive; after the War he became an accountant in a variety of fairly small companies and did not retire until he was in his early seventies; at the age of seventy-nine he went into hospital for major heart surgery; at that stage he was the treasurer of both the local synagogue and the local Jewish primary school, and an organizer for U3A; before going into hospital he organized a disc for each of the three organizations with all their accounts entirely up to date; a lovely man, and when he retired the secretaries cried; he is still that way and I like to think that I have learned a lot from him about how to be with people

7:19:24 We were from a nominally orthodox family in that we belonged to an orthodox synagogue; the first five years of my life we lived in Hackney in the traditional Jewish East End; when I was five we moved to Wimbledon to a new council estate where there was a very sparse Jewish community; we belonged to a nascent local synagogue, but it wasn't a very Jewish background and we did not have many Jewish friends; we felt different, actually I suppose I still feel different; Cambridge is a very Christian place in the way that it is organized in the naming of the terms etc., and it still feels quite alien and difficult sometimes; I have no religious beliefs myself; my wife is Jewish and is more interested in going to services for the ritual and comfort, the social dimension rather than for deep religious belief; as I grew up, Judaism provided a set of ethics and a framework, and a social network; all my parents' friends were Jewish; that is not the case for me now; my father's friends are still almost exclusively taken from the local Jewish community that he lives in; I think the respect for knowledge and learning, the idea that they are the way out of poverty, is something that I grew up with, and I attribute, at least in part, a Jewish thread to it; however poor Jews are there are books; they may be prayer books or other books; I don't know whether a sense of otherness contributes, that is an interesting question; over the last ten years I have been very involved, right at the heart of the University, on the Council and the General Board; I was very shocked the first time  I went to one of these very high level meetings that the senior men present were talking about football, cricket and rugby before the meeting, all of which are utterly alien to me; that is not an exclusively Jewish thing; I was reminded that on the day of my bar mitzvah Tottenham Hotspur won the cup final, and there were members of my family who had to make a decision whether to come to my bar mitzvah or go to Wembley, and they went to Wembley; I often have the feeling that even at the highest levels of this university, I guess in Government as well, there is an ideology from the English public school of using sport as a method of team building; I do not believe that it does not work, but sport is a method of bonding between individuals that is entirely alien to me; I don't know whether my Jewish background has some contribution to make to that

13:31:12 My first school for a few months was in Hackney and I don't have any memory of that; I then went to a fairly new primary school called Southmead near Wimbledon Common where early on my parents were told that I was below average intellectual ability, unlikely to pass 11+, and my handwriting was terrible (it still is); my parents, particularly my mother, didn't believe it; she had great faith in my abilities; when we lived in Hackney it was about a two mile walk to where her mother lived; apparently, when I was very young, I was able to count all the trees between them; by the time I was ten I had been through all the science books in the children's library, and we got special permission for me to go into the adult library to read science books there; I was obviously interested in science even if I wasn't able to write a very coherent English sentence; to the school's surprise, but not my parents', I did pass 11+; I then went to one of the pioneering comprehensive schools called Wandsworth

15:20:06 On first memory, it is hard to be sure if one is remembering something or reconstructing something told one; my brother is four years younger, and when he was born I went to stay with my grandparents; I have a vague memory of being in bed between them and they were both enormous; I have a friend who is now a well-known cancer professor who was at the same primary school; he lived in a very nice house while we had a small council flat; his house was about ten minutes away and he had a chemistry set in his garage; we used to do chemistry in his house; I had another school friend with whom I would go out to collect beetles and butterflies on Wimbledon Common, but not in a serious or systematic way as I just tagged along; at that stage I showed  no sign of leadership skills or passions, apart from a passion for reading; I can remember some of my first teachers but wouldn't say that any had a particular influence on me; encouragement came from home and an inner drive rather than from anything at school

18:01:01 I went to Wandsworth at the age of eleven; the school had been founded as a grammar school in the 1920s; it was a rather grand building set in football and rugby fields, in Southfields SW18; in the mid 1950s the Headmaster was a rather magisterial man called H. Raymond King; he was a passionate believer in comprehensive education so in 1956-7 the playing fields were all built over to create a large comprehensive school for 2000 boys, fourteen form entry, streamed from the top to the bottom; the top three classes were boys who had passed 11+ and the boys in the bottom classes could barely read; we had houses and sets, but not according to academic ability, so sports and forms covered the entire range of academic ability but when it came to teaching we were set; I started off in the second stream of the fourteen; within a year I was in the top form for everything that was set - English, French, maths; I really loved it as I loved working; it was a comprehensive school with very strong intellectual activity; it was also strong in sport but I had no interest in that, also in music which did interest me; when I went to secondary school there was probably an opportunity to learn an instrument, but my parents could not see much point in it; occasionally I have regretted it but not enormously, I don't have much physical dexterity so I don't think I would have been much good; at school I did 'O' level music; everybody had to do English, French and maths, then I started doing Latin in the second year and general science; in the third year we started to have choices; I chose chemistry, physics and biology, as I thought I might be interested in being a doctor; then there was a set of subjects that were more practical like woodwork and art, which I avoided by doing music; to do music you had to join the choir; at that time in the 1960s it was very famous; the choirmaster was Russell Burgess and all the choral recordings of the Philharmonia with Carlo Maria Giulini in the mid-1960s were done with Wandsworth; I wasn't quite good enough to be on the recordings but that was the atmosphere; I sang in Haydn's 'Creation' etc., and a huge range of choral music I had never heard before as my parents were not interested in it, but liked orchestral music; I began to go to concerts; if I had a chance of another career now I would like to understand why music has the emotional effect that it does; the more I look at how nature and molecules work the more awestruck and impressed I am by trying to understand it, and I am sure I would feel the same about music; my favourites are Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven etc. to Benjamin Britten; I try to listen every day, usually when I get home; my relaxation mechanism when I get home is to cook and listen to music; I mentioned that my mother did a huge amount of family entertaining and I got involved in that from a very early age; every Sunday morning I would make mayonnaise, coleslaw, would help her cook; I always loved cooking and I still say that it is the only kind of chemistry I am any good at; I listen to music as a relaxation mechanism; if I am writing a lecture or doing serious writing I don't like having music on, but much of what I do is visual as my lectures are all based on PowerPoint slides, and when I am drawing pictures I like to listen to music

26:49:06 About the time of my bar mitzvah at thirteen I was very interested in Hebrew as a language and carried on studying it for a couple of years after; then I lost interest in it rather than rebelling against it; I never saw the point of fasting, for example, at Yom Kippur; I didn't sit and think about it in a rational way, it was just a feeling I had that it was a waste of time; when I was at college my closest friend was militantly atheist, and I am not sure if that influenced me or not; I have thought about it a lot in the last few years; I love reading Richard Dawkins, but I think he is counter-productive; my mother died when I was in my mid thirties; I found the mourning process with all the family and friends coming to visit very helpful; my father-in-law died just four weeks ago so we went through that process again, and it is clear to me that having a social structure - and religion is a good way of organising this - so that you have support from people around you, is helpful; I enjoy being part of that social and cultural network; I rarely go to synagogue; where the service is in English it makes me feel very uncomfortable; I am at Selwyn College but don't go to the chapel there as I would also feel uncomfortable; I don't find it easy to think of it as an interesting piece of theatre that I can take part in; I feel uncomfortable about both synagogue and church services in a way that I don't fully understand

31:10:07 I was just interested in academic work at school and at college; I have never got involved in politics; my mother said to me when I was quite young that the only people who vote Conservative are the selfish and the foolish and I have seen no reason to disagree with that; I would describe myself as always having been a natural Labour supporter though the last few years have not made that very easy; I am pragmatic so that if I look at our local constituency, Cambridge, if I can't imagine voting Conservative I only have a choice of two; I was once accused by Professor Gillian Evans, when we were both on the Council, of being pragmatic; I took that as a compliment though in her mind that was an insult

33:01:03 At Wandsworth, our maths teacher who was a Polish refugee, loved teaching mathematics and impressed me a lot; my first chemistry teacher, Mr Garwood, who had done research on mass spectrometry before becoming a teacher, also impressed me; I was the first member of my family on my mother's side ever to go to university; on my father's side, he has an older brother whose oldest son went to university three years ahead of me; as far as my parents were concerned it was assumed I would go to university and become a professional; my mother really wanted me to become a doctor; I decided I was squeamish about blood and didn't want to be committed to six years of training; physics didn't really appeal to me, chemistry was there by default as biology seemed too soft; by the time I was in the sixth form I was clear that I wanted to do chemistry; by that time the original Headmaster had gone and there was not quite the same intellectual drive; my parents just wanted me to go to the best possible university for chemistry; Oxford and Cambridge were out of the question as in those days you had to have Latin 'O' level, which I didn't, and you had to stay on for a seventh term which was out of the question financially, and the school had no facilities; I talked to my chemistry teacher, who said that Imperial College was the best, but that it was obvious that I couldn't go there from Wandsworth School; I relayed this to my parents; you needed to get three B's at 'A' level in 1966 to go to Imperial and it was very unusual for anyone from my school to get that; my parents encouraged me to try; I put Imperial first, Manchester second, and some others; all the universities except Manchester made me a two E's offer; I was interviewed at Exeter, but Imperial College was special because it had a written exam in the morning and an interview in the afternoon; at all the universities in those days you could apply for a scholarship if you paid £1, and that included Imperial; I thought I wouldn't get into Imperial so did not pay £1; I did the written paper and in the afternoon was interviewed by a terrifying young man called Jack Baldwin; he is now Sir Jack Baldwin and has recently retired as the organic chemistry professor in Oxford; his first question to me was why hadn't I applied for a scholarship; I did get in and when I turned up in October 1966 what I discovered was that all those with scholarships came from articulate, affluent, middle-class backgrounds, where the expectation was that they were going to do well; coming from a family where nobody had ever been to university, didn't know where to place oneself in the pecking order; it was interesting that those with scholarships ended up with thirds or 2:2s - that was an important lesson in behaviour; my parents were keen for me to stay at home because it was cheaper and there was no tradition of people going away from home; that suited me quite well and for the first two years I commuted every day which meant I didn't have to worry about food or washing, and could concentrate on the work; I made a friend there in my first week who was also Jewish, from a very similar background in Leeds; he had been to a grammar school and had always come top which I had never done; most of the people in the class at Imperial were used to coming top, I wasn't; we had an exam at the end of the first term and my friend came tenth and I was about a third of the way down; I was really pleased and he was devastated; I think it was much easier for me as it was always a pleasant surprise when nice things happened; I was able to work very effectively and got a first at the end of my second year; this was the exam pattern at Imperial as the third year was given to writing a dissertation and doing a research project; by that time I was getting a bit fed up with living at home and moved into college accommodation; people think that the sixties were a time of drugs, sex and alcohol, but I didn't experience any of that

40:46:20 I think I really blossomed in the third year; I was given a research project to do about nuclear magnetic resonance; we had done a little in our first year but I hadn't understood a word of it; I was given a dissertation subject on the applications of nuclear magnetic resonance in organic chemistry and I found it absolutely fascinating; I particularly enjoyed the work being done by Dudley Williams who had recently been appointed here in Cambridge, and was ten years older than me; I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to get away from London, from my friend who was rather dominant, from my parents, and in retrospect I resented not having the opportunity of having gone to Oxbridge though I was not consciously thinking that at the time; I wrote to Dudley Williams; the Professor at Imperial at that time was Derek Barton who went on to get a Nobel Prize; he interviewed all the third year organic chemists and I told him I wanted to go to Cambridge to do a PhD with Dudley Williams; he looked horrified as he wanted all the best young men to stay at Imperial; about three weeks later he called me back and said that he had just spent the weekend with Lord Todd, and that it was now arranged that I would go to do a PhD with Dudley Williams; and so I came here

43:06:18 I had come to Cambridge once before as a tourist with my parents in the early 1960s; it didn't make much of an impact on me then; I came up in February 1969 to meet Dudley; the architecture, ambience, history - none of that mattered to me at the time; it was an opportunity to get away from things in London and an opportunity to do good science with someone who looked young and exciting; I did not have any career plans at that stage; I met my future wife within a few weeks of my coming here, she was just starting as an undergraduate at New Hall; we met at the Israel or Jewish Society; I apparently told her I wanted to do NMR in a small company; the reason I came here was to do nuclear magnetic resonance with Dudley but when I came he said he didn't think there was anything interesting left to do; what he was really excited about was mass spectrometry, so I joined him; when I arrived in October 1969 he gave me two projects, one was in mass spectrometry that he thought was exciting, but there was another in nuclear magnetic resonance; he remembered that when I had come to see him that I was interested in NMR and he had just seen a paper published that summer on a new technique that looked like it would be really useful in organic chemistry; when he read the paper he realized that the man who had written it didn't fully understand what he had done and was not in an environment where he could exploit it; it was something he knew almost nothing about but could see that it was an interesting technique which involved making an inorganic compound added to a solution of organic compound that changed the NMR spectrum, which is like a fingerprint; it changed the fingerprint in a way that would tell you something about the molecular structure; it took me three months to make this magic compound during which time I met Louise, joined a choir - I was at Churchill as was Dudley; Imperial Colleges gives a very good practical training in chemistry, and I knew how to make small quantities of material, so when I arrived here I was much better at practical chemistry than Cambridge graduates; my life changed on January 22nd 1970; the man in America who had written the original paper had made a molecule which he had done deliberately to change the NMR spectrum of organic compounds; his molecule had a metal ion in it which binds to the organic compound and changes the spectrum; it acted like putting a little bar magnet on the end of a molecule; he had done it in a particular way, which I copied, but right at the end he had added something that binds the metal ion which has to come off before the organic molecule can add; I had to get access to a spectrometer in the department which was used by a technician from nine till five, so I could only do experiments after that; I didn't have time to get right to the end of his synthetic route so I thought I would try using the molecule one step before the end of the synthesis; I ran an NMR spectrum and it was clear that I was seeing an effect which was four times bigger than he had seen; he had seen a spectacularly big effect but just by missing out one step I actually had results that were four times better; my supervisor wasn't around and over the next day or two I did some experiments with very simple molecules; the original paper had use cholesterol as the test molecule; this is a large, complex, molecule with a complicated spectrum; probably my biggest contribution throughout my whole PhD was that because I didn't know how to cope with a very complex molecule, I chose a very simple molecule; this was an m-hexanol, a simple molecule with six carbon atoms, with six sets of signals; in a normal NMR spectrum they are bundled on top of each other, and when you added the shift reagent all these peaks came out, so I ended up with six beautiful sets of peaks going right the way across a piece of paper; I got this by adding a little bit of compound, running a spectrum, little bit of compound, running spectrum, and every time I added a bit more the spectrum moved; it was equivalent to having a spectrometer of a hundred times the magnetic field strength, one hundred times the power; it was an unimaginably strong magnet effectively, and just by fortunately having chosen a simple molecule it was an incredibly visual picture of the magnetic field around the molecule, and of the structure of the molecule; you have to leave the chemistry department at midnight when everything gets double locked; I finished all the experiments just before midnight and I cycled over to Churchill; I couldn't get into New Hall; I just knew that this was something really exciting; a couple of days later my supervisor came back and I went to his office; I put down one spectrum after another and he could see this spectrum coming out, and the molecule coming out; at the end of it he said "Bloody Hell! We’ve hit a gold mine"; he picked up the phone and called a friend of his in the molecular pharmacology unit to come and look, and he agreed; we submitted our first paper in ten days; I went on to get a whole lot of other results and we submitted another paper within a few weeks to the same journal; it went back to the same referees who said that the first paper had crystallized the whole novelty so there was no point in published the second; we sent it to the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the world's best; it was accepted immediately and has been cited hundreds of times; that was an extraordinary experience that one's first piece of serious research gave me complete freedom, and made me realise that one person working on his own could actually transform a field by doing the right experiment; after a year or so Dudley said I should think about doing something else; he thought we had skimmed off all the cream from this idea; it was a very important lesson for me about being in a field very early on, to set the broad parameters of it, and then leave it for other people to do detailed work; I think I have done that four or five times since then

53:14:10 If you stay in a field too long you get to know all the details, all the prejudices, you become constrained by what you think you know, and you can't see any big breakthroughs because you have a whole edifice of what you know as facts; if you go into a new field you can bring a fresh eye - an organic chemist's eye into biology, anthropologist's eye into history, or whatever, and look at it in a different way from everybody else; I learned a lot about the value of giving a PhD student freedom and support; the first draft paper I wrote came back from Dudley a couple of days later covered in red ink, but the second paper came back with much less; by the time I finished my PhD with my tenth or eleventh paper, there was hardly a red mark on it; I learned a lot about how to interact with a student, at least with a successful student; my wife says that I am very good with good PhD students but not with weak ones; I like to set a broad target and then when someone shows me results I can see things in them that they don't, and can criticise what they do; I am not good at providing day to day guidance of the kind that is common in chemistry; when I was doing my PhD with Dudley it was a big Lab with several research students; one supervisor came in every morning at nine and told his student what to do and would come back at five to harvest the results; the student hated it as it gave him no opportunity to think; I realized that my supervisor had a fantastic strategic insight into what matters in chemistry, what was right and what was wrong; if you gave him a result, even in an area about which he knew little, he had the sense of what it was right and what was wrong; it gave me the opportunity to make mistakes, but also to explore for myself; that is the way I have always run my research groups since then, but you need pretty talented students to flourish with that kind of regime; I have had about fifty-five PhD students; there has been a broad spectrum with some that I regretted taking; there have been some who have wanted to be told exactly what to do, but it has never been my way; I have always wanted to do exploration, prefer to discover things when I don't know what I am looking for; looking back that is just the way my PhD was