Profession: science populariser

Jennings and Empson, fellow-students, co-founded a literary magazine with Bronowski. An aspirant poet at the time, he helped Riding on a project in Mallorca, before falling out (Graves found him smug). He bumped into Beckett in Paris, editing an anthology and translating a surrealist magazine with him (putting Duchamp’s notes into English). He interviewed Durrell, and struck his colleague Attenborough as inspired. Huxley and Ayer were fellow radio ‘brains’. He discussed plans for an institute with Salk, becoming colleagues there with his great friend Szilard, Crick (who inherited an office and a model brain from him), and Monod.