B. Brett Finlay, Ph.D.
HHMI International Research Scholar
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
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Transcript:
What does it take to be a good scientist? It takes, first of all, desire to be a
scientist. You have to have the desire to learn new things. You have to be moderately
organized; despite the crazy picture of scientists, you do have to spend your time
being organized because there are only so many hours in a day. You have to like doing
experiments and experiments are fun. You have to have a sheer desire to understand
something. I think that's what makes a scientist.
Being a scientist requires many different abilities. The personalities of scientists are
very different. When you go to a meeting and you meet 10 scientists, they'll be very
different people. They all have in common the desire to understand something. Some
people will be very aggressive and others will be very quiet and shy. But they're all very smart . . . they
understand things and they want to learn more.
A career in science is something that doesn't just happen. You have to go about and
really fashion it. So I would say if you like science, keep at it, follow it up. My
guess is if you have this burning desire, you will find that out. And you can be a
scientist. There is room for many different people doing many different things in science.
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