Consistently first in his class, he won all the top school prizes. He was a solitary child, and while his little friends were thumbing through their comics, he was poring over textbooks of natural science. At the age of ten he started collecting dead insects, was fascinated by fish, and the paupers’ grave in the town became his playground and treasure island.

In order to prevent the family home from becoming a charnel house, his parents gave their offspring a microscope, on the grounds that it would take up less space than whole skeletons. From that moment was born a passion, destined to grow greatly, for the world of the infinitely small.