Pyers Symon asked me to publish this:
"Today is the 90th birthday of the man that I consider the greatest living Briton, Frederick Sanger, but it seems that most people haven't heard of him. He is, apparently since I haven't met him, extremely modest about his achievements but given that he is the only person alive to have won two Nobel Prizes and in fact the only person ever to have won two in Chemistry (1958 & 1980) it is fair to say that they are substantial. The first man to elucidate (in the 1950s) the primary structure -the order of amino acids which form its backbone - of a protein (insulin) and later on to develop one of the key methods of detemining the sequence of bases within DNA (the dideoxynucleotide method was the one - with modifications - used by the Human Genome Project to sequence human DNA).
I am concerned that British science education is in such decline that we will not be able to produce someone like him again. Reports in yesterday's Telegraph indicates that 'A' level standards are now "two grades easier than 20 years ago" and the grades in mathematics - key to an understanding of the physical sciences - have jumped by three and a half grades, gravely weakening our scientific and technology future. Additionally, science departments are now considered too expensive for universities, with many chemistry faculties being closed over the last 10 years, and although there has been a slight increase recently, the overall trend is still downwards with 30% of Physics departments being closed since 2002 - and even top flight chemistry departments such as Sussex being under threat.
Given the above I fear that we will find it difficult to produce such people again."
Thank you Pyers! You've educated me.
