By Dr Liz Carter
Like many couples, my husband and I met at Bristol – I did Microbiology; he did Biochemistry. We had some lectures and practical classes in common, which was useful because he had a better idea of what he was doing in biochemistry than I had and as he worked on the opposite side of the bench I would sometimes pinch his results when it came to writing up.
Our paths occasionally crossed socially too but it wasn’t until we moved into the same shared flat after graduating that we really became friends. A mutual friend fortunately had two spaces in her flat in Tyndall’s Park Road (now part of the BBC), conveniently close to the medical school (and Woodland Road Sports Centre). Both of us had taken opportunities to stay and study for a PhD (a technician in Biochemistry at the time used to refer to the university as a PhD factory), each in our respective departments, though Rick’s project on dental biochemistry included a lot of microbiology and mine on exotoxin production in bacteria involved some work on membrane biochemistry. Living together, we started going out for the odd drink, a game of badminton, I became the scorer for the university cricket club that Rick was a member of and later captained. It was a good time to be in Bristol.
When my three years came to an end, I moved to Surrey to work for Beechams, Rick stayed in Bristol continuing his research assistantship. We got married despite living apart, and so I narrowly avoided becoming Dr Pepper, when eventually we were granted our PhDs, having submitted just before the 5 year deadline (not to be recommended).
‘Times have changed, obviously. In our day, we hand-wrote our theses then paid a typist to print them. Graphs were drawn with letraset.’
Years later, and both then working in Surrey at opposite ends of the drug discovery process – me at the research bench, Rick in clinical trials, we had a family, two children, who followed their parents interest in science as they grew up. Our daughter now works in medical communications having done a degree in Natural Science at Cambridge; our son, Ben, following in his father’s footsteps, did a degree in biochemistry at Bristol and then stayed on, like us, to do a PhD.
On one of our visits to Bristol (we always enjoy going back), Ben was able to get us into the medical school and proudly took us to his lab. The route from the front entrance seemed vaguely familiar, along a corridor, down the stairs, along another corridor to the lab… where I had done my PhD!
Times have changed, obviously. In our day, we could just walk in to the medical school – there was little in the way of security. We hand-wrote our theses then paid a typist to print them. Graphs were drawn with letraset. Ben does it all his on his computer – much quicker and easier, and so he has no excuses for going beyond his three years. Technology has generally made a huge difference to what can be done scientifically too.
The lab looks a bit different partly due to an incursion of 3D bioprinters, but I think the floor is still the same and the place has the same feel to it. We are still in touch with others who did PhDs at the same time as us. Their children have followed a variety of career paths but as far as we know, no one else has done their PhD in the same lab as their parents.
So do labs run in families? Perhaps only this once.
Dr Ben Carter, graduated this year with a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Medicine. The picture above is with his parents Dr Liz and Rick Carter in the C-floor lab in the Biomedical Sciences Building where they all studied.