Michelle Paver

I live on my own, happily, and I've never wanted children, but it did occur to me one day that there's part of me in 'Torak' - he's a loner, I'm a loner - as there's part of me in 'Renn,' who's quite waspish. I think, in some senses, 'Torak' is the son I never had.

My interest in protein breakdown as a research problem began in l955 at about the time I joined the Biochemistry Department of Yale University. It was known that proteins break down intracellularly in the mature animal.