![]() Within a year of getting the prize I was offered and accepted the presidency of Rockefeller University in New York. What effects did the Nobel prize have on my subsequent career and work? It has certainly helped me to get scientific leadership positions. ![]() There may be some truth to this given the extra demands on one’s time, but of course prestigious awards also allow new projects and research to be undertaken. My most exciting trip was deep into Antarctica, to the New Zealand research station Scott Base, something I had wanted to do since I was a schoolboy, following in the footsteps of the explorers Capt Scott and Lt Shackleton.Ī recent study suggests that in general the extra commitments that Nobel winners and MacArthur fellowship recipients take on result in fewer papers and citations after their awards. You get to visit some extraordinary places. You meet lots of people, many who are interesting and impressive as well as being famous: prime ministers, presidents, royals, artists, authors, actors, musicians and highly accomplished scientists I had admired from afar for decades. This is a disease I have called “Nobelitis”, which I sincerely hope I have managed to avoid, largely because of the efforts of my family, friends and colleagues in keeping me in order. Over time it can become dangerous, as you start to believe that perhaps you do know about nearly everything. It is impostor syndrome on steroids.Ī big problem is that people think you have something sensible to say about nearly everything. It is like having a whole new extra job, with upwards of 500 requests a year. Suddenly you become a public figure being asked to do all sorts of things: to give lectures, quite often on topics you know little about to sit on committees and reviews you are not always well qualified to be on to visit countries you have barely heard of to sign endless petitions on what are probably good causes, but you never know. It is the one scientific prize everyone knows. Was he also saying I had won it too? I returned to the room and said something that in retrospect must have sounded very strange: “I must go now because I think I may have won a Nobel prize.” It was true, I had won it, together with Tim and Leland Hartwell, a scientist from Seattle, for our work on how cells control their division. I listened to it again and then a third time. A heavily distorted message had been left, and it sounded like a journalist asking me for comments on the Nobel prize in medicine, which he said had been awarded that day to my friend Tim Hunt. Someone came in and gave me a note from my lab saying I should turn on my mobile phone. ![]() Twenty-two years ago, I was in a room in London talking about setting up a museum to celebrate the monk Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics.
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