people-from-norwich

"I that my slender oaten pipe in verse was wont to sound Of woods, and next to that I taught for husbandmen the ground, How fruit unto their greedy lust they might constrain to bring, A work of thanks: Lo now of Mars, and dreadful wars I sing, Of arms, and of the man of Troy, that first by fatal flight Did thence arrive to Lavine land, that now Italia hight."

"WHEN a botanist first enters on the investigation of so remote a country as New Holland, he finds himself as it were in a new world. He can scarcely meet with any certain fixed points from whence to draw his analogies; and even those that appear most promising, are frequently in danger of misleading, instead of informing him. Whole tribes of plants, which at first sight seem familiar to his acquaintance, as occupying links in Nature's chain, on which he has been accustomed to depend, prove, on a nearer examination, total strangers, with other configurations, other economy, and other qualities; not only all the species that present themselves are new, but most of the genera, and even natural orders."

"How scientists go about their job: and it's a process, it's a question of asking questions, respecting observation, respecting experiment, having tentative explanations and then testing them.... There is a problem sometimes with how we teach science at schools. Because we sometimes teach it as if it has been chiseled in stone."

"Even at the level of the cell, phenomena such as general cellular homeostasis and the maintenance of cell integrity, the generation of spatial and temporal order, inter- and intracellular signalling, cell 'memory' and reproduction are not fully understood. ...This is also true for the levels of organization seen in tissues, organs and organisms, which feature more complex phenomena such as and operation of the immune and s."

"We need to focus more on how information is managed in living systems and how this brings about higher level biological phenomena... more investigation into how living systems gather, process, store and use information, as was emphasized at the birth of ."

"DNA can act as a digital information storage device that can be precisely copied. Similarly, the mechanism of the lac operon... can be described in terms of molecular interactions between DNA, protein and s. But these interactions make sense only when they are translated into a negative loop..."

"We need to describe the molecular interactions and biochemical transformations that take place in living organisms, and then translate these descriptions into the logic circuits that reveal how information is managed. This analysis should not be confined to the flow of information from to , but should also be applied to all functions operating in cells and organisms, including chemical interactions and transformations as well as physical phenomena, such as electrical signalling and mechanical processes."

"Ever since Sir Isaac Newton's times, scientists have worked in the same sort of way:"

"This notion of information being at the heart of life... is not restricted to me. I'm in good company. Sir Paul Nurse, former president of the Royal Society, in his visionary essay in Nature, "Life, Logic and Information", extols the virtues of thinking in an information, web-based way about life, and how, instead of worrying too much about what is going on at the molecular level, we should think of life as being a collection of logic modules... with information flowing between them, and control systems... a sort of engineering approach."

"Come, swift-wing'd Fancy, airy maid, In varied, dazzling vest array'd, Inspire thy vot'ry's lay; Grant me thy flow'ry walks to tread, To range thy summer-painted mead, Or near thy fountain play. Now led by thy resistless hand, Or guided by thy fairy wand, O'er yet untrodden space; Or on thy pinions borne along, The bright Ideas' flitting throngs Pursue th' aerial race."

"Say, lordly Man, of pow'rs possest, That no inferior creatures know; Say, can the mind with reason blest, Relentless fury show. To thy domain all beasts belong, Yet why so merciless thy sway? Why to the harmless, useful throng, Such cruelty display? Let all thy kind compassion share, Through Nature's universal frame; Whatever breathes thy kindred air, Or feels the vital flame."

"I thank God for this ten weeks' quiet before the end... Life has always been hurried and full of difficulty... This time of rest has been a great mercy."

"They have all been very kind to me here. But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

"It was a pity that Miss Cavell had to be executed, but it was necessary. She was judged justly. We hope it will not be necessary to have any more executions."

"I have no fear nor shrinking; I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me."

"I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved."

"Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful, something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy."