Sir Walter Bodmer FRS in interview with Dr Max Blythe: Interview 1

Distinguished geneticist, Sir Walter Bodmer, Director of Research (1979-91) and then Director General (1991-96) of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, begins the interview by talking of his family background and education. He was born in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a Jewish doctor, who came with his family to England in 1938 to settle in Manchester. Sir Walter was educated at Manchester Grammar School and the University of Cambridge, where he studied mathematics and developed an interest in statistics and genetics, influenced by Sir Roland Fisher, the Professor of Genetics. He speaks of PhD studies in genetics leading to a demonstratorship in the genetics department at Cambridge, and a short period working with Guido Pontecorvo, of Glasgow University, a pioneer of somatic cell genetics using Aspergillus. He also mentions Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner as influential figures at this time.The interview moves on to 1961 when Sir Walter, accompanied by his wife Julia and young children, went to Stanford University, California, to work with Nobel laureate, Joshua Lederberg, having first taken, at Lederberg's suggestion, a short course in molecular biology at Cold Spring Harbor. He discusses his work in molecular biology at Stanford with Lederberg and Arthur Kornberg, and he speaks of the exciting research environment at this time. He then talks of starting research in two other areas of genetics at Stanford: firstly, the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system of genetic markers, when he and his wife went to work with Rose Payne, one of the pioneers of the HLA field; and, secondly, genetic analysis with man-mouse somatic cell hybrids. The interview concludes with a discussion of his decision to return to England in 1970, after nine years in California, to take up the Chair of Genetics at the University of Oxford