His vision of the synthesis of art and science may be a never-ending process, but his work on Nina just may be the full fruition of a lifetime of trying.
No wonder Mr Trimble so often seemed an embattled figure... and yet to those of us who have followed him in recent years one of his personal trademarks was the perverse manner in which moments of deep crisis in Northern Ireland's never-ending political negotiating process sometimes seemed to inspire him to a kind of jaunty calm.