My own interest in basic aspects of electron transfer between metal complexes became active only after I came to the University of Chicago in 1946.
I think becoming a scientist is the product of parents who gave me enormous opportunities to master nature.
I would only once have the opportunity to let my scientific career encompass a path from the double helix to the three billion steps of the human genome.
It is a dire need for our young scientists to be proficient in running and using their lab equipment rather than depending on their assistants or workers. Once they learn how to use every lab equipment, their scientific career is likely to progress smoothly.
In the fall of 1961, I went up to Clare College Cambridge to read Natural Sciences, with the intention of becoming a biochemist in the end.
It's a blessing in a scientific career - the almost daily thrill of scientific discovery.
In 1986, I was asked by the then-Dean of Science at the University of British Columbia, Dr. R.C. Miller, Jr., to establish a new interdisciplinary institute, the Biotechnology Laboratory. I decided that it was time for me to start paying back for the thirty years of fun that I had been able to have in research.
I can't ever remember not wanting to be a scientist.
The Grand Duke [of Tuscany] ...after observing the Medicaean plants several times with me ... has now invited me to attach myself to him with the annual salary of one thousand florins, and with the title of Philosopher and Principal Mathematicial to His Highness; without the duties of office to perform, but with the most complete leisure; so that I can complete my Treatises.
My family was scientifically inclined: My brother did turn into a neurophysiologist, and I almost became a scientist myself. I could have gone that way.
The only difference between men and women in science is that the women have the babies. This makes it more difficult for women in science but should not be seen as a barrier, for it is merely another challenge to be overcome.
When I was about 9 years old, I became very interested in the human body and diseases. In general, I was just curious about the world around me. I think that any sort of curiosity as a child is a good beginning to a career in science because science, at least to me, is a continuous exploration of the unknown.
Japanese was so popular that the thinking was that if you could not master Japanese, you would not be able to become a scientist
in the schools of North Korea
My dad joined Langley in 1964 as a co-op student and retired in 2004 an internationally respected climate scientist.
I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis.
By the end of the millennium, despite the continuing excitement of the field, almost thirty years of a detour from chemistry to medical imaging began to pall, and I changed my focus to a field of chemical research, just in time for my past to catch up with me in the form of a Nobel Prize. All detours should be so productive!
I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.
I have a philosophy that has guided me throughout all of my scientific career, and that is, I think of myself as a fairly thoughtful person. I don't go into projects impetuously, and I try to select important problems.
My scientific career has developed on three continents: Asia, Europe and North America.
Historically, girls have not been encouraged to be scientists, to be explorers, and there's a social kind of constraint, of course. Having the responsibility, a disproportionate part of the responsibility, for caring for families, caring for children. I know this challenge from firsthand experience because I have three children and four grandsons.And some of the time I have spent as a scientist and as an explorer has meant choosing to not be with my children and grandchildren as much as I might otherwise have done had I not been a scientist, an explorer.
I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.
My father was a research scientist in tropical medicine, so I always assumed I would be a scientist, too. I felt that medicine was too vague and inexact, so I chose physics.
I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.
After forty years in the lab, I was asked in 1991 to become president of The Rockefeller University. Unlike a working scientist, being president for seven years provided an opportunity to interact with scientists in many different fields and broadened my scope of the natural sciences.
Due to these various circumstances, when I entered the Catholic University of Louvain in 1934, I had already travelled in a number of European countries and spoke four languages fairly fluently. This turned out to be a valuable asset in my subsequent career as a scientist.
