A very brief scientific reminiscence of John Gurdon

Abstract

There remain by this point only a small handful of still active scientists whom I have known virtually since the beginning of my own career. Integrating over all this time, of these long time colleagues, John Gurdon was by far for me the most intellectually influential. This began early, and continued over the decades on both our continents. Whenever and wherever John and I would meet, our scientific conversation would soon devolve into a certain kind of dialectic that we have always both so enjoyed with one another, a head on confrontation of scientific concepts with facts, as mobilized by clean logic. Among the inspirations of a life in science are scientific and personal friendships such as I have enjoyed with John, friendships that have stretched unattenuated across the vast changes in state of knowledge and in outside attitudes, in truths and in fads, which rise forth in each decade.

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