What influenced you to focus your research on ATP Synthase?
I was always oriented towards understanding bioenergetics—it just seemed interesting. My original fascination with ATP Synthase came from
its extraordinary biological importance and this was reinforced as those of us in the field discovered what an amazing molecular machine it is – a rotary, iondriven molecular motor – something that could hardly have been envisaged when I started.

What is your favourite aspect about research?
For me a central aspect has been the incredible joy of discovery in basic research. This is a lengthy process that often begins when you obtain
experimental results that disagree with what you had expected. First, you have to make sure that the surprising findings were not due to an experimental error. Then you have to start thinking—there’s always more than one possible explanation. You try
to find clues in the scientific literature and you design additional experiments to narrow the possibilities. Sometimes there is a “Eureka moment” when you have an insight that you are sure is going to be important, or when you become convinced that one
of your potential explanations is likely to be correct.
More often, though, important discoveries are gradually revealed through many series of experiments
published in a number of papers. When you have
designed and carried out many critical experiments
that could have proven you wrong, yet every one of
them supported or extended your idea and none of
them refuted it, you feel that you know or understand something that no human being before you
has ever known or understood, and that is pretty exciting.
A second aspect is that one of the greatest
joys in life comes from working with individuals
who are just plain excellent people – productive,
hard-working, smart, dedicated and interesting.
I’ve been fortunate to have been trained by such
people, to have supervised such people, and to have
collaborated with such people. The view of scientists as being so objective as to be emotionless is
completely wrong – we have just had to learn to
control our emotions in certain situations, such as
when experiments fail, which is pretty often. This can make it difficult for students to enjoy original scientific investigations. Failure is simply a normal part
of the scientific process; original and creative ideas
will often fail to pan out, which can be discouraging.
Fortunately, since the challenges of science are
shared with our peers, they will provide support
through tough times.