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James D. Watson: The Man Who Makes Cold Spring Harbor Tick
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17603 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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7 / 1990 |
1,816 Words |
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Joan Kostick Andrews
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A storm is brewing outside James Watson's office window. The view of boats bobbing in the far harbor on the inlet and canoes left on the nearby hillside makes his office seem a refuge from the storm, a safe harbor. Family snapshots and personal cards are thumbtacked to the bulletin board behind his desk, while in front of him a small framed photo of a beautiful woman smiles up at him - Elizabeth, his wife of 21 years and mother of their two teenaged sons, Rufus and Duncan. Dressed in khaki pants and a navy blue V-necked pullover, his stretched out body framed by the pointed firs in front of the picture window presents an image of total relaxation. Or almost.
"You should have really major objectives. You're unlikely to solve something really important unless you want to solve something important. It doesn't happen by accident," says Watson.
Great objectives are the key to understanding what Cold Spring Harbor is all about, as well as the man who directs its course.
"First, you have to have an objective, then you figure out how to get it," Watson explains. "It's learning the facts that you need to know to get to your objective. You need to make good choices."
Leaning back in his chair while gazing out the window, he seems to drink in the quiet beauty before him, at the same time giving the impression he is keeping track of every moment the early morning interviews is costing in terms of his jam-packed schedule of activities.
The need to make good choices, whether in a scientific experiment or a life decision, is a constant motif throughout the conversation.
Watson's discovery of the double helix seems to be an object lesson on his scientific method of great objectives accompanied with good choices. When Watson finished his doctoral degree under Salvador Luria in 1950 at Indiana University his ambition was to learn more about DNA. But up to this point in his education he had somehow managed to avoid taking any chemistry or physics courses that were of even medium difficulty. However, once he set his great objective of figuring out DNA, he learned what chemistry he needed to know to accomplish that goal. Out of the expanding pool of scientific knowledge, he had to decide what he needed to know in order to reach his objectives.
"You don't learn things just because they're out there, but because they will help you," he says pointedly. "People must make choices, and they have to know who to model their lives after. You have to have heroes. But if you have heroes, you must have antiheroes, examples of people who are mucking things up."
Watson believes that older scientists have a fundamental responsibility to guide their less experienced colleagues through the pitfalls of unproductive methods. "You can't tell young researches how to work, but you can tell them what hasn't worked. I think you can learn how you should try to solve problems, and that probably is a tradition which can be passed on."
An almost missionary zeal toward spreading good science pervades the atmosphere of the lab. Watson sees it as his duty, his
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