His disarming curiosity lent young Alan “an extraordinary gift for winning the affection of maids and landladies on our various travels,” his mother notes. He was inventive from the start. “For his Christmas present, 1924, we set him up with crucibles, retorts, chemicals, etc., purchased from a French chemist,” she adds. He was nicknamed “the alchemist” in boarding school. “He spends a great deal of time in investigations in advanced mathematics to the neglect of his elementary work,”
