My partner, Martin Hammond, who has died of motor neurone disease aged 57, was one of a generation of aspiring scientists in the world of genetic research. He was also a man who held on to his principles and is remembered as an inspiring lecturer and a punctilious researcher, keen to keep genetic research in the public sphere.
He was born in Romford, Essex, son of teachers, Peter (who later became a United Reformed Church minister) and Hilda. Educated at Hornchurch grammar school (he was fond of reporting that Roxy Music played at the school concert in 1972), he studied biology at Leicester and specialised in genetics at the University of Washington, Seattle. He spent his early 20s squinting down a microscope, dissecting the ovaries of fruit flies "a fiddly operation" to complete his PhD thesis.
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