"Sometime in 1962 at one of the TIFR Faculty meetings Dr. Homi Bhabha surprised us by announcing that there is going to be a Molecular Biology Division in the Institute and one young man by name Obaid Siddiqi is going to initiate the programme. I remembered that on an earlier occasion in one his speeches Dr. Bhabha had mentioned that the British scientist Dr. A.V. Hill who was an adviser to Pandit Nehru on Science had told him when he founded TIFR ,that he should have Biophysics as one of the activities at TIFR since it is a promising area of new research. Dr. Bhabha had replied to him that he would wait for the right man to turn up to start this activity. Almost fifteen years later Obaid Siddiqi turned up and Molecular Biology unit came into existence in TIFR. At the time of the Seventh Five year Plan projection, when I happened to be the Director, Prof Siddiqi came up with the proposal to start another Molecular Biology section outside Bombay where the emphasis would be on fundamental issues in molecular biology and not on applications .Though the TIFR Council was supportive ,DAE was not happy to start yet another molecular biology division since there were already two under its aegis..Well, finally after some efforts it came through and became the National Centre for Biology (NCBS) at Bangalore. I am so happy that both these divisions are thriving as part of TIFR and undoubtedly the entire credit goes to none other than Prof. Obaid Siddiqi. I wish him many more years of rewarding activity." ---B. V. Sreekantan