Richard Lewontin, however, is a vigorous opponent of reductionism, particularly hostile to the extension of the reductionist approach to justify biological determinism – the idea that behaviour is controlled by genes. I was especially grateful because the colleagues who presumably worked quite hard to vote that prize in my direction, had initially totally disagreed with my hypothesis. I was enormously heartened by that, and my feeling about human nature was tremendously boosted. You love your fellow human beings even more.”RICHARD LEWONTINBorn 1929 EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Biology at HarvardMost scientists are committed reductionists, and modern biology attempts to reduce its mysteries to explanations at the molecular level. ‘Winning’ is not a good word really, because the fact that such a prize comes to you is hardly of your doing. You keep re-arranging it, and that’s really quite hard work.”On being wrong: “Being wrong in science is often much more fun than being right, because the next day you wake up with a new horizon, with a new set of priorities for the next attack you’re going to make.”On the Nobel prize: “Becoming a Nobel prize winner tends to put a certain distance between you and your colleagues, this is something I’ve regretted. You prepare it, you plant things there, and it’s a garden partly of facts, and partly of ideas.

His approach to all scientific problems, and to life in general, was original, humane and positive.On a gentle art: “It’s my feeling that the public doesn’t understand very much about the real process of scientific investigation, so probably it’s good that some of us, to get our bread and butter, have got to convey to the public .. that science is a wonderful cultural activity. It is a gentle art, and there’s no reason why it can’t be practised in a house in the countryside.”On the mind: “I’ve often thought that the human mind is a bit like a garden. He built a personal laboratory and set up the Glynn Research Foundation, a registered charity, to promote fundamental biological research for the benefit of humanity. Once there, they’re crashingly obvious.”On the pleasure of research: “The conduct of an experiment from beginning to end, an experiment which starts with, I quote Peter Medawar, ‘the act of creation’.

Not all experiments you think of are good experiments, but thinking of one is just wonderful, eureka! It’s fantastic.”PETER MITCHELL1920 to 1992 BIOCHEMIST was director of the Glynn Research Foundation, Cornwall Nobel prize winnerThe late Peter Mitchell was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1978. Good ideas come from logical relationships which one hadn’t perceived before. once you start thinking about conduct in a rational way, you don’t stop at animals, you start thinking about your own species too.”On altruism: “A lot of people are quite comfortable thinking through how to make a motor car, or why the bank rate goes up and down, but they’re not at all comfortable about thinking through altruism, and that’s the message of biology, that one should do both.”On ideas: “I think one’s doing extremely well if one has a good idea once every, let’s say, six months … Mitchison went up to Oxford to study zoology just as the science of immunology was beginning to develop, and was taught by Peter Medawar He’s known both for his directness and his kindness. But he also has a reputation for intellectual ruthlessness.On aggression: “I don’t buy the notion that by studying aggression in sticklebacks you can learn all there is to know about aggression in humans.