At various conferences, I had admired Robin for his kind innocent questions which, when answered by a speaker, proved to be far less than innocent. They were then pursued with a combination of friendliness and persistence which finally made matters crystal-clear and left the speaker a friend rather than an adversary. Now I met Robin in person. Even now, almost 40 years later, and after meeting the Hills repeatedly in their Cambridge home, I remember my Australian excursions with the Hills

and a polish postdoc Stan (Stanislav) to Bateman′s bay or to Eucalyptus forests with gratitude and great affection. For the much younger German, the old Englishman proved to be a fountain Proteasome inhibitor of broad human wisdom, much beyond photosynthetic wisdom. There were dark nights in which Robin explained the sky of the Southern hemisphere to me. Fig. 2 Keith Boardman

(right) in conversation with Hal Hatch (middle) and Robin Hill (left), 1973 Fig. 3 Robin Hill, University of Cambridge, photo presented to Ulrich Heber by Priscilla Hill, Cambridge Back in Düsseldorf, German university life continued along long-established lines. The student revolution had died down. As a main result, I was no longer required to wear a tie. Hans Heldt came from Munich to learn aqueous and non-aqueous techniques of chloroplast isolation. In the biochemical laboratory of Martin Klingenberg he had done work on selleck screening library mitochondrial adenylate transporters. Not much later he demonstrated catalyzed transport across the chloroplast envelope of phospoglycerate and dihydroxyacetone phosphate in exchange against phosphate (Heldt and Rapley 1970)

opening the path for brilliant further work on chloroplast transport. Foreign professors came for brief visits. Kursanov from Moscow and Shlyk from Minsk differed from other Soviet visitors. Shlyk remarked he would consider his life well lived if 30 years after his death one line in a textbook would remain that could be traced back to his work. Kursanov impressed me not only by his original work on long-range sugar transport in plants but also by his personality. When I met Akio Yamamoto again during a visit to Japan, I discussed possibilities for working abroad with him. As an unexpected result, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science invited me in 1976 Astemizole to work with Kazuo Shibata (Fig. 4) at the Rikagaku Kenkyusho, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken), which is situated in Wako-shi near Tokyo. Kazuo′s group worked in an over- crowded laboratory. The professor resided next to it in a very small place together with his secretary, Asayo Suzuki, and with me. At that time, after my American education, I was still a democrat. Now I was suddenly exposed to a hierarchical system. Understanding nothing, I was critical. Nevertheless, relations both to the younger Japanese and to their boss developed well. For the first time, I felt I could give something to younger scientists.