Born in Breslau, Germany 1932, interned as a child in the Isle of Man, educated at Cheltenham Grammar School and Oxford University (BA Hons Chemistry), PhD (NIMR with Gilbert Beavan). 

He worked with Paul Doty in Harvard on biophysical chemistry and then as a KCL Lecturer in Biophysics before joining the MRC Biophysics Unit. He was the first person to run RNA on a gel and latterly studied the cytoskeleton. He was an innovator in science journalism, co-founding Nature News and Views as the anonymous Nature ‘Molecular Biology Correspondent’. 

He was also an author of several popular science books and editor of The Longman Literary Companion to Science (1989), A Bedside Nature: Genius and Eccentricity in Science (1996), The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception and Human Frailty (2000), Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes (2002). Professor of Biophysical Chemistry KCL, he died in 2021.