You would not think, arriving at the Medical Research Council's laboratory for molecular biology, that you were visiting one of the few places that can genuinely claim to be the home of genius. This may be Cambridge. But it is not the Cambridge of ancient university colleges or shiny new hi-tech research labs. It is Cambridge, Addenbrookes Hospital - an expanding concrete growth on the outskirts of the city.
Patients occasionally wander through the doors of the MRC lab. But they can receive little help here, only an insight into how medical treatment might look 20 or 30 years from now. In fact, the only sign of the lab's famous scientific heritage is the helical stairwell that climbs the back wall of the 40-year-old building.
No less than seven Nobel laureates have passed through the lab. In 1953 two of its founding fathers, Francis Crick and Jim Watson, uncovered the double helix structure of DNA. Fred Sanger also worked here, developing the sequencing techniques that made way for the mapping of the entire human genetic code, a job finished at the nearby Sanger centre last year.
All these great minds have been "driven by the excitement of discovering the molecular basis of the processes underpinning life," says the lab's director, Dr Richard Henderson. The lab has played a large part in laying the foundations of 21st century medical science.
But what makes the lab unique in the UK is that its researchers are still outperforming their US and German rivals. According to an analysis of academic publications exclusively undertaken for our website, EducationGuardian. co.uk, the lab's papers were the most frequently cited by the world's biomedical scientists during the late 90s. In many of the fastest-moving areas in science, the Cambridge researchers are making more impact than the best of the Max Planck institutes, and the top US academic powerhouses, Harvard, MIT and Caltech.
On average, each of its papers is cited over 36 times by other researchers, more than seven times the world average. Most research publications are never cited.
Statistical analyses of publications are fraught with pitfalls (some semi nal pieces of work can be neglected for years while other s are cited for introducing a basic technique or even getting things wrong). But nonetheless Henderson puts the lab's success down to its high academic standards. Researchers produce a few papers that are highly influential and innovative, opening up whole new areas. They are discouraged from churning out what Henderson calls "pot boilers" - papers of little worth.
So why are some of our brainiest Britons - for so long under-funded, over-bureaucratised, and unloved - still managing to be world leaders? The lab gets a special £15m annual block grant from the MRC, allowing scientists freedom to work on problems they find interesting. Many have tenured positions. They don't have to face the daily grind of drafting new grant applications. There is no Research Assessment Exercise. And there are no undergraduate students. I am sitting in UK researchers' academic nirvana.
Many of the lab's strengths can be traced back to its beginnings. It was founded by five Nobel laureates, including Crick and Watson. These scientists worked across the disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology. Young researchers flocked from around the globe to work at their side on the new genetic science.
Watson's 1968 book on the race to elucidate the structure of DNA, The Double Helix, remains the frankest account of how scientists really work - suppressing results because of personal rivalries, misleading grant committees and academic bosses to pursue controversial projects.
Yet in today's terms, the world of young Crick and Watson represents a bygone, innocent and altruistic era of research. Science is now big business. The laboratory is one of the few tangible examples of what the government refers to in vague terms as the "knowledge economy" at work . The lab's researchers have launched 11 spin-off companies, developing new medical treatments worth an estimated £5bn to date and employing some 2,500 staff. The lab will receive £2m of the £17m in profits generated over the last year. At least three of the lab's scientists are now self-made millionaires.
"It is the case now that people are much more aware of commercial opportunities, and we actively encourage people to take out patents and set up companies," says Henderson. "But the goal of young scientists is still to make a big contribution in basic science and be known for it."
The UK, however, still comes out a poor second to the US in terms of appreciating how important investment in basic research is to future economic growth, according to Henderson. The US National Institutes of Health is increasing its annual bud get to £15bn from next year; this dwarfs the £400m allocated to universities and institutes in the UK.
The emergence of the US as the world's scientific superpower is confirmed by the analysis of research publications and citations in the biomedical sciences. In medicine, Harvard University alone produced 100 times the number of articles published by the MRC lab during 1994-98 - more than Cambridge, Oxford and University College London put together.
One can only wonder how long the UK can sustain its scientific stars faced with this sort of competition. The Cambridge laboratory still attracts an international mix of researchers, but far fewer Americans than in the past. The lab has also had difficulty filling some senior posts.
Another worry for Henderson is the work ethic in the US, which makes our researchers look like slouches. "Generally in the UK people do not work as hard as in the US," he says.
Yet you get the impression that there are a few more Nobel laureates and influential papers still waiting to emerge triumphantly. Henderson fondly recalls the last time the lab secured a Nobel prize in 1997. "A colleague rang with the news that the lab had won another Nobel prize. He said you'll never guess who. And it was only on the fourth attempt that I actually got to John Walker."
