I\u2019ve rolled my rock to the top of the mountain and sat down for a rest. Tonight I will allow myself a brief respite from my labours. I\u2019ve been working very hard of late but the job is now done and I feel a great sense of relief.<\/p>\n
\tHaving been made a professor about a year ago, on Wednesday night I finally got around to delivering my inaugural lecture to an audience of family, friends and colleagues. This was my chance to explain myself \u2013 to give some account of what I\u2019ve done in my career in science, and perhaps some suggestion of what is to come.<\/p>\n
\tI have never in my life sweated so much over a lecture. The breadth of the audience made it very difficult to judge how to pitch the content so that as many people as possible could follow what I had to say. There is no set format to these things, but that freedom seemed only to magnify<\/em> the problem of preparing the talk.<\/p>\n \tThe lecture had been on my mind, with slowly increasing intensity, for the past several months. A few weeks ago I finally started shaping my scattered notes and making slides. I had a reasonably finished draft come last weekend but didn\u2019t get around to having a run-through until Tuesday\u2014at about 11.30 pm. I was a bit shocked to discover that it was way too long\u20141 hour and 13 minutes\u2014and rather disjointed. I spent the next few hours trying to trim the fat, but when I hit the sack at 3.20 am, it was still not right.<\/p>\n \tI was in my office early on Wednesday morning, my guts in knots, and spent most of the day trying to streamline the presentation and re-work the connections between some slides. It was all a bit intense but I did manage to have a couple more run-throughs and things were finally taking a shape that seemed to be hanging together. I managed to smile and chat to a few people who arrived to have tea before the lecture. The sight of so many friendly faces appeased my nerves. But only slightly.<\/p>\n \tAs I rose to speak, and fiddled with the clip on the microphone\u2014sending out loud booms and scrapes into the theatre\u2014I knew that if I made a decent start, things would probably be OK.<\/p>\n \tI managed not<\/em> to fluff my lines for the first few slides and settled to the task. And then started to enjoy myself. Beginning with my recollection of a unusual announcement heard on the platform at Tooting Bec tube station\u2014\u2018If your destiny is not shown on the board, please take the first train and change at Kennington\u2019\u2014I tried to describe the path that had taken me from a childhood in Northern Ireland to a professorship in structural biology at Imperial College. Much of it seemed to be something of a random walk but the journey, though extremely arduous (positively Sisyphean!) at times, was never less than interesting.<\/p>\n \tI\u2019m too tired to rehearse the content here in any detail tonight (though some of it may well be re-cycled for use in future posts!). But the weight of the task has finally slipped from my shoulders\u2014I have been released from my bond. And tired though I am, I also I feel strangely re-energised for the work that lies ahead.<\/p>\n \tLet’s roll that rock some more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve rolled my rock to the top of the mountain and sat down for a rest. Tonight I will allow myself a brief respite from my labours. I\u2019ve been working very hard of late but the job is now done … Continue reading