Interdisciplinary research: the pros and cons

When at Reading University I headed a group that was the only profitable one on campus. We had as many as 15 researchers and staff on occasion and were paying for all of them. I was involved in 7 different topic areas. The staff of the Zoology Department that I belonged to said that this wasn’t academically sound and tried to limit me. But when I was involved in discussing the future of one of the other departments I was involved with, I told the University Bursar that I believed in spreading topics widely because fashions change, and we needed reliable income. He agreed wholeheartedly! In fact, I had skills in only three areas: materials science, advanced fracture mechanics and biology.