BIO After 44 peripatetic years at the bench, Victor Nurcombe is finally composing his swansong. After completing his PhD in Developmental Neurophysiology in Sydney, he trained further in Munich at the Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry with Hans Thoenen, at Oxford with John Heath and Colin Blakemore, the Universities of Paris and Lille, the Rockefeller and NYU in New York, and in Boston. He returned to the WEHI at Royal Melbourne Hospital under Sir Gus Nossal, before setting up his first laboratory at The University of Melbourne. He then decamped to his "traditional" home at The University of Queensland, joining up with Simon Cool, before coming to the IMCB, and then the IMB, at Singapore's A*STAR in 2003. He's exhausted, and needs to catch his breath. And to reflect about being on both sides of disease.