202 ELKES
of particle paths in collision. I could not go beyond first principles, and
yet, as I read myself into the field, I tried to grasp the curious trans
formations, jumps, symmetries and asymmetries operating in particle
physics, I kept on imagining the life of the mind as a molecular process,
linking it in some way to particle physics. It was, of course, a fatuous
exercise; yet it gave me strange satisfaction to engage in such molecular
games. It was at this same time that I began to read Charles Scott
Sherrington’s Integrative Action of the Nervous System,^1 an influence which
has persisted to this day. Later, I attended, by invitation, and hiding safely
in the dark of a back seat, a meeting of the august British Physiological
Society, in which Edgar D. Adrian (later Lord Adrian) demonstrated the
firing of neurons. The loudspeaker crackled as he touched a cat’s single
vibrissa. It remained silent as he touched another. This strange brew of
physics, immunology, and neurophysiology got me started on my inter
est in “drugs and the mind.”
I had to wait my turn to get within reach of the brew. My chief,
Alastair Frazer, to whom I owe the very foundations of my career, pro
posed that I put my interest in physical chemistry to use. His field was
not the nervous system but fat absorption, and he suggested that I
work on the structure of the surface lipoprotein of the chylomicron, a
physiologically present fatty particle that floods the circulation from the
thoracic duct after a fatty meal. The envelope was a lipoprotein, carrying
a pH-sensitive ionic charge. I developed a microelectophoretic cell and
various flocculation techniques as a means of characterizing the nature
of this lipoprotein coating.^2
I suppose what intrigued me then, and still intrigues me, was guess
ing the properties of a macromolecular structure from physical chemical
measurements, building up a mental picture on the basis of collateral
evidence. This wish to visualize, to have a map (mostly a wrong map) has
stayed with me all my life. Playing with molecular configurations became
quite a hobby for me and my friends. In any event, with the study of
this lipoprotein envelope, my quest into the interface between physical
chemistry and biology began. I started to read widely, pulled, I suppose,
by a wish to penetrate the fundamental building blocks of life. I ven
tured into surface chemistry (or colloid chemistry) and the study of
monomolecular films. It was, of course, the pursuit of an illusion. But,