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work in research. So almost by default, I entered an interregnum of
two years as a house physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
That magnificent hospital admitted me to its prestigious training de-
spite my woeful inexperience at the bedside, and despite my admission
to the chief of the medical service that I had no intention of ever
practicing medicine. I have no evidence that they ever regretted their
decision. Indeed, years later, I was privileged to receive their Warren
Triennial Prize, one of my most treasured recognitions. I cherish the
memories of my time there: I learned much about medicine, society,
and myself; and I had put the lie to the confident predictions by peers,
faculty, and departmental chairs that my wanton fourth year in medi-
cal school would doom my career.
Finding a Place
But I was aching for a return to the laboratory. On my final day as a
medical house officer, as I walked out of the emergency ward toward a
different sort of future, I removed the bulky pager from my belt and,
in a moment of reckless euphoria, hurled it against the wall dis-
abling it beyond repair, I am sure. No one ever sent me a bill.
Clinical training behind me, I began research in earnest as a post-
doctoral fellow in the Research Associate Training Program at the Na-
tional Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Maryland, which was
designed to train mere physicians like myself in fundamental research.
At the time, the program was a unique resource, providing U.S. medi-
cal schools with many of their most accomplished faculty. Without
this assist, it is unlikely that I could have found my way into the com-
munity of science. Certainly, no academic laboratory brimming with
well-trained Ph.D. s was about to take me in. Times have changed. The
Accidental Scientist 49
United States now abounds in programs that welcome newly minted
physicians for research training, striving to reverse a steep and unwel-
come decline over recent years in the number of physicians who pur-
sue research.
I barely escaped the clutches of the U.S. Army, which put me
through a full induction exam and was poised to draft me when my
commission in the Public Health Service for work at the NIH finally
arrived. So I joined the cadre of medical scientists who were seques-
tered from violence by their positions at the NIH under the disparag-
ing sobriquet of yellow berets. I never exercised my entitlement to
wear the uniform of a lieutenant commander (or to travel gratis in
military aircraft).
My mentor at the NIH was Leon Levintow, who has continued as
friend and alter ego to this day a relationship cemented as much by a
common love of music and gossip as by shared interests in science.
(Gossip is a common coin in scientific discourse, as explained by
Francis Crick: What you are really interested in is what you gossip
about. 7) Leon helped me in many ways. But preeminent among these
was by being my advocate with administrators and scientists alike. He
developed a confidence in my prospects and he made that confidence
known in many useful ways, while I was at the NIH and in the years to
come. Every young scientist can profit from such an advocate, and ev-
ery senior scientist should be willing to be one. There is a remnant of
Renaissance patronage in the practice of modern science that is both
admirable and effective.
I began research on the means by which the poliovirus might repro-
duce itself. My friends outside of science were puzzled that I should
devote myself to such work. After all, it was already clear that the vac-
cines developed by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin would eventually elim-
inate the fearful paralytic disease caused by this virus (and by now
have largely done so). So what was left to do? The answer lies in the
role of simplification in the practice of science.
Despite its diminutive size, the mammalian cell is fiendishly com-
plex, its lifestyle sustained by tens of thousands of genes and equally
abundant chemical reactions. In contrast, most viruses have relatively
few genes of their own (typically no more than a dozen), yet reproduce
50 Accidental Scientist
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Poliovirus. Crystals composed of numerous virus particles within a human cell. Each
black hexagon is an individual virus particle. Magnification approximately 20,000-fold.
(Electron micrograph from collection of the author.)
in a bountiful way by parasitizing the machinery of a mammalian cell.
When we explore the reproduction of those few viral genes, we obtain
a sketch in miniature of the machinery that sustains the cell itself.
The strategy of simplification sired the molecular revolution that
has transformed our understanding of life and death over the past sev-
eral decades. Yet we still struggle to understand the molecular under-
pinnings of how poliovirus reproduces itself and causes disease. There
is a paradox here. We often hit upon remedies for practical problems
(such as the vaccines for poliovirus) before we achieve a fundamental
understanding of the processes that underlie those problems (such as
the ability of poliovirus to replicate and induce disease). But once
the fundamental understanding is in hand, even better remedies can
follow.
Working on poliovirus brought me my first publishable research.
My feet were now thoroughly wet. I had found a place for myself. Or
had I? People began to ask where I was going next. What future could
Accidental Scientist 51
I imagine? I had no idea about this, had really never given it any
thought. Then departments of microbiology began to offer me jobs.
So I arbitrarily christened myself a microbiologist and soon realized a
natural attachment to the discipline. After all, it was the study of mi-
crobes that had spawned the molecular revolution in modern biology,
and that revolution had first lured me into research. To this day, how-
ever, I hesitate whenever asked to name my discipline. I am in fact a
dilettante. I could be nothing other. I enjoy every minute of it. But it is
in most eyes a disreputable fate.
Midway through my postdoctoral training, Leon Levintow departed
for the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
In his stead came Gebhard Koch, a visitor from Germany with whom I
began to collaborate and who, in 1967, lured me to his home base in
Hamburg for a year. Once again, I had an enlightened benefactor: the
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