A. James Hudspeth, Ph.D., M.D.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
Professor and Head of Laboratory,
The Rockefeller University, New York
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Transcript:
The features that, at least to my mind, help make a good or a great scientist really are not some of the ones that our society most often points to. It isn't just enormous intelligence or enormously rapid thought but a couple of other properties are particularly important. One is innovative thought, ideas that run counter to some preconceived notions that, in fact, are based on weak data or poorly examined hypotheses. Another is simply perseverance. People, in order to work out the details of scientific inquiry, need a lot of time and a lot of patience. And it's very
rare that one has a sudden blinding or overwhelming insight that one can promptly follow through. More often one has a hunch or an intuition that one then tries to trace over many months or many years until one finally has the full picture.
You have a sense that a particular biological process comes about in a particular way. And it's only in an intuitive sense that you then try to get on paper, in terms of concrete experimentation. Making that transition can be extremely hard but when it's successful it's remarkably rewarding.
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