Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science

by James D. Watson

  Charles S. Robertson(1905-1981)—He was stricken with Alzheimer's disease in the late 1970s, and died in 1981 at his home in Delray Beach, Florida.

  Henry Rosovsky(b. 1927)—He stepped down as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard in 1984, and in 1996 retired as the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Emeritus. In 1990 he published The University: An Owner's Manual, a book about his experiences in the world of higher education.

  Jonas Salk(1914-1995)—In his last decade, his focus was increasingly on AIDS and the need for an effective vaccine against it. He directed the Salk Institute until his death.

  Joe Sambrook(b. 1939)—He left Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1985 to head the department of biochemistry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Ten years later, he moved to the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, where he has played an active role in advancing breast cancer research. In 2006 he was appointed Executive Scientific Director of the Australian Stem Cell Centre.

  David Schlessinger(b. 1936)—After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard, he completed his postdoctoral training at the Institut Pasteur and then joined Washington University in St. Louis, eventually to serve as professor of molecular microbiology. In 1997 he moved to the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is currently Chief of its Laboratory of Genetics.

  Phil Sharp(b. 1944)—After leaving Cold Spring Harbor, he spent the rest of his career at MIT where he has headed its Center for Cancer Research (1985-1991), the Department of Biology (1991-1999), and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research (2000-2004). In 1993 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Rich Roberts for their independent discovery of RNA splicing. He co founded Biogen in 1978 and, more recently, Alny-lam Pharmaceuticals (2002).

  Tracy Sonneborn(1905-1981)—He spent the rest of his career at Indiana University, Bloomington; he retired from teaching in 1976 but continued to do research until his death at the age of seventy-five.

  Günther Stent(b. 1924)—In 1952 he moved from Caltech to the University of California at Berkeley, where he has remained since. During a 1972 sabbatical at Harvard, be began studying neurobiology, and soon developed a leech colony at Berkeley to support his lab's neuroembryology and neurophysiol-ogy research. He is currently professor emeritus of neurobiology.

  Leo Szilard(1898-1964)—He remained loosely affiliated with the University of Chicago until he became a founding fellow of the Salk Institute in 1963. Only several months after moving there, he died of a heart attack and his ashes, at his wish, were dispersed over the Pacific Ocean.

  Howard Temin(1934-1994)—Howard remained at the University of Wisconsin for his entire academic career. In 1975, with Renato Dulbecco and David Baltimore, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research on tumor viruses. Though never a smoker, he became a victim of lung cancer, dying at the early age of fifty-nine.

  Alfred Tissières(1917-2003)—He remained at the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of Geneva for the rest of his career, living with his wife, Virginia, in the nearby village of Vandoeuvres. A sabbatical year at Caltech led to his influential work on the heat shock response in Drosophila.

  Alex Todd(1907-1997)—After his work on the structure and synthesis of nucleotides, which won him the 1957 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he continued to work on the structures of a variety of molecules found in insects and plants. He retired from his positions as professor of organic chemistry at Cambridge University in 1971 and lived in Cambridge until his death.

  Niccolò Visconti di Modrone(1920-2004)—After working between 1950 and 1954 on phage genetics with AI Hershey at Cold Spring Harbor, Niccolò left research for business and cofounded the pharmaceutical company Lepetit, and later Pierrel. Upon retiring, he took up residence in his hometown of Milan and maintained a close friendship with his colleagues at CSHL, including Waclaw Szybalski, Evelyn Witkin, and Barbara McClintock.

  Liz (Lewis) Watson(b. 1948)—She has received master's degrees in historic preservation from Columbia University and in library and information science from Long Island University. She has devoted much time to preserving the historic buildings of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and in 1991 published a pictorial history of CSHL titled Houses for Science. For many years she was also a member of the Huntington Historic Preservation Commission, and in 2001 she was appointed by Governor George Pataki to the New York State Board for Historic Preservation.

  Klaus Weber(b. 1936)—Since 1975 he has worked at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, where he is now professor emeritus. Along with wife Mary Osborn, he pioneered the use of immunofluorescence microscopy and has made significant contributions to the study of the cytoskeleton.

  Jerome Wiesner(1915-1994)—He served as president of MIT from 1971 to 1980 and devoted a majority of his time after retirement to teaching and policy research, strongly focusing on nuclear arms control.

  Maurice Wilkins(1916-2004)—After his contributions to the double helical structure of DNA at King's College, London, he focused increasingly on issues of the social responsibility of scientists, teaching undergraduate courses on the topic and serving for twenty-two years as president of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science. He was also very proud of his involvement in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

  Carroll Williams(1916-1991)—He spent his entire career in insect physiology at Harvard, starting with the completion of both his Ph.D. and M.D. and his appointment to its faculty in 1946, from which he retired in 1987.

  Edward 0. Wilson(b. 1929)—He is currently Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus and curator of entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. In recent years his interests have turned increasingly to conservation biology.

  Tom Wilson(1902-1969)—He died of a heart attack all too soon after his move in 1968 from Harvard University Press to Atheneum Publishers in New York City.

  Barbara Wright(b. 1926)—She continued in research after marrying Herman Kalckar and moving to the United States, working first at NIH and later at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston Biomedicai Research Institute. In 1982 she became a research professor in biological sciences at the University of Montana.

  Sewall Wright(1889-1988)—After his mandatory retirement from the University of Chicago at the age of sixty-five, he moved to the University of Wisconsin where he served as professor of genetics for thirty-four more years.

  Norton Zinder(b. 1928)—Continuing study of phage Φ and its interactions with E. coli, he remained all his career at the Rockefeller University where he is now professor emeritus.

  David Zipser(b. 1937)—After completing a postdoc with Sydney Brenner and then serving on the faculty of Columbia University, he moved in 1970 to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as its bacterial geneticist. Increasingly attracted by brain research, he left CSH in 1982 for the University of California, San Diego, where he is now Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Neuroscience.

  Remembered Lessons

  Chapter 1. FROM CHILDHOOD ON CHICAGO'S SOUTH SIDE

  1. Avoid fighting bigger boys or dogs

  2. Put lots of spin on balls

  3. Never accept dares that put your life at risk

  4. Accept only advice that comes from experience as opposed to revelation

  5. Hypocrisy in search of social acceptance erodes your self-respect

  6. Never be flippant with teachers

  7. When intellectually panicking, get help quickly

  8. Find a young hero to emulate

  Chapter 2. FROM ADOLESCENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

  1. College is for learning how to think

  2. Knowing “why” (an idea) is more important than learning “what” (a fact)

  3. New ideas usually need new facts

  4. Think like your teachers

  5. Pursue courses where you get top grades

  6. Seek out bright as opposed to popular friends
<
br />   7. Have teachers who like you intellectually

  8. Narrow down your intellectual (career) objectives while still in college

  Chapter 3. FROM YOUNG ADULTHOOD AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY

  1. Choose a young thesis adviser

  2. Expect young hotshots to have arrogant reputations

  3. Extend yourself intellectually through courses that initially frighten you

  4. Humility pays off during oral exams

  5. Avoid advanced courses that waste your time

  6. Don't choose your initial thesis objective

  7. Keep your intellectual curiosity much broader than your thesis objective

  Chapter 4. FROM SUMMERING AT COLD SPRING HARBOR

  1. Use first names as soon as possible

  2. Banal thoughts necessarily also dominate clever minds

  3. Work on Sundays

  4. Exercise exorcises intellectual blahs

  5. Late summer experiments go against human nature

  Chapter 5. FROM OBSERVING FEO SZILARD AND MAX DELBRüCK

  1. Have a big objective that makes you feel special

  2. Sit in the front row when a seminar's title intrigues you

  3. Irreproducible results can be blessings in disguise

  4. Always have an audience for your experiments

  5. Avoid boring people

  6. Science is highly social

  7. Leave a research field before it bores you

  Chapter 6. FROM POSTDOCTORAL YEARS AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY

  1. Choose an objective apparently ahead of its time

  2. Work on problems only when you feel tangible success may come in several years

  3. Never be the brightest person in a room

  4. Stay in close contact with your intellectual competitors

  5. Work with a teammate who is your intellectual equal

  6. Always have someone to save you

  Chapter 7. FROM THE FIRST YEARS ON HARVARD'S FACULTY

  1. Bring your research into your lectures

  2. Challenge your students’ abilities to move beyond facts

  3. Have your students master subjects outside your expertise

  4. Never let your students see themselves as research assistants

  5. Hire spunky lab helpers

  6. Academic institutions do not easily change themselves

  Chapter 8. FROM THE SECURITY OF BEING RECENTLY TENURED

  1. Teaching can make your mind move on to big problems

  2. Lectures should not be unidimensionally serious

  3. Give your students the straight dope

  4. Encourage undergraduate research experience

  5. Focus departmental seminars on new science

  6. Join the editorial board of a new journal

  7. Immediately write up big discoveries

  8. Travel makes your science stronger

  Chapter 9. FROM WORKING FOR PSAC

  1. Exaggerations do not void basic truths

  2. The military is interested in what scientists know, not what they think

  3. Don't back schemes that demand miracles

  4. Controversial recommendations require political backing

  Chapter 10. FROM BEING ENNOBLED IN STOCKHOLM

  1. Buy, don't rent, a suit of tails

  2. Don't sign petitions that want your celebrity

  3. Make the most of the year following announcement of your prize

  4. Don't anticipate a flirtatious Santa Lucia girl

  5. Expect to put on weight after Stockholm

  6. Avoid gatherings of more than two Nobel Prize winners

  7. Spend your prize money on a home

  Chapter 11. FROM BAD DECISIONS MADE IN HARVARD YARD

  1. Success should command a premium

  2. Channel rage through intermediaries

  3. Be prepared to resign over inadequate space

  4. Have friends close to those who rule

  5. Never offer tenure to practitioners of dying disciplines

  6. Become the chairman

  7. Ask the dean only for what he can give

  Chapter 12. FROM BEING EDITED BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

  1. Be the first to tell a good story

  2. A wise editor matters more than a big advance

  3. Find an agent whose advice you will follow

  4. Use snappy sentences to open your chapters

  5. Don't use autobiography to justify past actions or motivations

  6. Avoid imprecise modifiers

  7. Always remember your intended reader

  8. Read out loud your written words

  Chapter 13. FROM WATCHING TOP SCIENCE EMERGE IN THE BIOLOGICAL FABS

  1. Two obsessions are one too many

  2. Don't take up golf

  3. Races within the same building bring on heartburn

  4. Close competitors should publish simultaneously

  5. Share valuable research tools

  Chapter 14. FROM MANAGING CANCER RESEARCH

  1. Accept leadership challenges before your academic career peaks

  2. Run a benevolent dictatorship

  3. Manage your scientists like a baseball team

  4. Don't make midseason trades

  5. Only ask for advice that you will later accept

  6. Use your endowment to support science, not for long-term salary support

  7. Promote key scientists faster than they expect

  8. Schedule as few appointments as possible

  9. Don't be shy about showing displeasure

  10. Walk the grounds

  Chapter 15. FROM HEADING THE COLD SPRING HARBOR FABORATORY

  1. Avoid boring people

  2. Delegate as much authority as possible

  3. Institutions are either moving forward or they are moving backward

  4. Always buy adjacent property that comes up for sale

  5. Attractive buildings project institutional strength

  6. Have wealthy neighbors

  7. Be a friend to your trustees

  8. All take and no give will disenchant your benefactors

  9. Never appear upset when other people deny you their money

  10. Avoid being photographed

  11. Never dye your hair or use collagen

  12. Make necessary decisions before you have to

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  © George Band: 111

  Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives: 40,49,57, 64,103,149,244 (top), 251, 254,260,281,288,290

  Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives, Barbara McClintock Collection: 59

  Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives, James D. Watson Collection: 3,5,7, 8,9,10,14,29,30, 81, 87, 89,107,175,176,183,184, 185,244 (bottom), 268,287,308

  Photo by Manny Delbrück: 307

  Rachel Glaeser: 100

  From the photo collection of Russell H. Hart, Jr., West Lafayette, Indiana. Photo taken by Russell H. Hart, Sr., deceased: 12

  Harvard University Archives: 219,321

  National Library of Medicine: 298

  © The Nobel Foundation 1962:188

  Richard T. Payne: 32

  Rockefeller Archive Center: 108

  © Rick Stafford: 209

  University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication: 13

  James D. Watson: 126, 140, 146, 214, 265, 329

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  James D. Watson was director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York from 1968 to 1993 and is now its chancellor. He was the first director of the National Center for Human Genome Research of the National Institutes of Health, from 1989 to 1992. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, he has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  The text of this book was set in Minion, a typeface produced by the Adobe Corporation specifically for the Macintosh personal computer
, and released in 1990. Designed by Robert Slimbach, Minion combines the classic characteristics of old-style faces with the full complement of weights required for modern typesetting.

  Composed by North Market Street Graphics,

  Lancaster, Pennsylvania

  Printed and bound by Berryville Graphics,

  Berryville, Virginia

  Designed by Anthea Lingeman

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2007 James D. Watson

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Watson, James D., 1928—

  Avoid boring people: and other lessons from a life in science / by James D. Watson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-48179-5

  1. Watson, James D.—Biography. 2. Molecular

  biologists—United States—Biography. 3. Scientists—

  United States—Biography. I. Title.

  QH3.w34.A3 2007

  572.8092—dc22

  [B] 2007015675

  v3.0