HZ (The Bossman) took us out to lunch on Tuesday. We went to a decent Mexican Restaurant unimaginatively named "Tortilla Sam's. But the roots of the name are original. Its named after the owner's pet iguana. In fact, iguana paintings are a large part of Tortilla Sam's decor. But I digress. Iguanas have nothing to do with my never winning the Nobel Prize.
Over lunch, HZ, as he sometimes does, regaled us with tales of famous scientists and the crazy lives they led.
Case number 1: HZ's own post-doc advisor. Stanley Cohen. Inventor of recombinant DNA technology. Winner of the Laskar, and other sundry awards whose names I don't remember. Dude is 72 years old. Has had knee replacement and bypass surgery. Allegedly returned to the lab in the afternoon after undergoing bypass surgery in the morning. Works weekends and holidays. Even Christmas. Thinks vacations are a waste of time. Does take a week off with long-suffering wife once a year. But he takes manuscripts with him for light reading whilst water-skiing. Oh, and he only eats a yogurt for lunch. The guy is a millionaire several times over. The recombinant DNA patent alone fetches him 100s of mills. What motivates this man, I asked HZ. Why does he push himself when he has clearly achieved so much.
Answer: He really loves science. 'Nuff said.
Case number 2: HZ's wife's thesis advisor. This guy did his post-doc at Caltech. Apparently, for the 3 year duration of his post-doc, he didn't have an apartment. He lived in the lab. No kidding. He slept in the lab. Took a shower in the gym every morning.
Interesting aside: When I mentioned this to roomie, she said he must have been stingy. It never occured to me that he could be stingy. I can't fathom anyone who was apparently a genius, being that stingy. They would be too smart to be miserly. It has to be passion. Or does my idealism clog my better judgement?
Case number 3: HZ's wife's post-doc advisor.(HZ's wife is surprisingly normal for having intimately worked with these nut-jobs.) She was the youngest woman ever to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences.(She wasn't even 40 when it happened). Has a lab of over 40 people. Has more money than she knows what to do with. Publishes in great journals. HZ says she never sleeps. Never. She apparently catches a few winks in her office, but never sleeps for 6 hours at a stretch like normal people.
And none of these people, though they are all fabulously successful, have won the Nobel. So, what I got from this entire conversation was, that to be successful, you have to:
a). Starve
b). Live in the lab
c). Never sleep
d). Never take vacations
Thats why I'm never going to win the Nobel Prize. Apart from being too dumb of course.
Ah well, all these awards are fixed anyways.
NB: Now I know why HZ works like a dog. Its the sheer pressure of having seen up-close what it takes to succeed. I shall no longer wonder why he burns the midnight oil in his office, when he should be home dreaming sweet dreams.
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2 comments:
Most of mankind's sparkling achievements have come through misery of the one that toiled for it..Dostoevsky's finest works are called schizotypal and he went on himself to be a raving mad schizophrenic, Van Gogh was misery personified, we all love Woody Allen as the dimunitive crazy nut, not the smart handsome 6 foot quotation spewing hunk; Einstein had marital problems besides being hounded by Nazis, Gandhi was killed by a nation that was ages behind his thinking...never was a family man, Fleming never saw penicillin distilled for all his serendipitous luck. We all saw Sylvia Nasar's romanticized version of John Nash in Beautiful Mind, not what it feels like without the music playing and the sepia tinting.Marie Curie was a polish refugee who fled to Paris to do most of her work.
Their personal lives were not what we would aspire for right? If there was not madness in them, we would have had just another person among the many billion other people who do not win the Nobel...right?
Too true. Madness seems to be the prerequisite for genius.
Not that I ever had any aspirations in that direction.....I'd be happy to be able to figure out that 10-8.58 is 1.42 in my head! Right:)?
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