The small group that I belong to used to be called ‘radioecology and tracer studies’. I like to think of us like a small family. We are about 10 people, one group leader, and three senior scientists like me, one post-doc, 5 technicians and 1 PhD-student. The laboratory was started already in 1956 and this group has kept much of its profile over the years. Originally it was started in order to learn about the atmospheric deposition of radioactive isotopes that were due to the large number of nuclear bomb tests in the atmosphere 1955-1962. Since we are still the only group in Denmark analyzing radioisotopes at environmental levels a major time of our everyday work nowadays is to deal with the frequent requests of analyzing strange isotopes in strange samples. This is the effect of us being highly specialized in these analytical techniques required to ‘see’ and quantify radioactive isotopes. In fact we earn a great deal of our salary doing these commercial services to governmental institutions and companies. As a scientist this is both a pleasure and a pain. The making of money for salary and equipment may more easily be found this way than by scientific applications.  But it is frustrating not to find sufficient time to work on the scientific issues.