David Sainsbury
I thought it would be really great to have a science centre where kids could be quite free to do their own experiments and their parents perhaps helping them. Both children and parents. And this is not altogether an original idea. It goes, in a way, back to Bacon in the 17th century, and Frank Oppenheimer who started the Exploratorium in San Francisco, just after the war. And this is exactly what goes on in the Exploratorium. So my humble sort of end of this was to start something like the Exploratorium in Bristol. We call it the Exploratory, in deference to Frank, and we had about two million people come round it. Two million children mainly, and it was in the old railway station at Temple Mead. It had other locations actually as well but mainly there and it really was a tremendous lot of fun. And I’d really like to say that the first exhibition we did was supported and paid for by David Sainsbury who is one of my hero figures. He was also my student. I supervised David Sainsbury when he was at Cambridge, when I was a lecturer and he’s been very, very generous in supporting my work and lots of other people’s work. Amazing man.