Skydiving into the interface of chemistry and biology

Abstract

Let me extend my deepest thanks to the American Chemical Society. It is a very special honor to be included among the Priestley Medalists, many of whom are my teachers and scientific heroes. I am grateful to my students and mentors who helped me along the way. Tonight I will take you on my journey from Boston to Pasadena. I will discuss the importance of luck, my early education, graduate school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Yale University, becoming a California Institute of Technology assistant professor at age 28, the impact of teaching on my research direction, embracing risk and crossing the divide between chemistry and biology, venturing outside the academic ivory tower, and national service. My parents emigrated from Ireland. They came over in the early 1920s, before the Great Depression. Life must have been hard. Our family of six lived in Dorchester, a working-class suburb of Boston. One important value at our home was to focus on education. In the 1950s, science was admired in America. Jonas Salk had developed a safe and effective vaccine for polio, saving thousands of children from being disabled or confined to an iron lung. In 1957, when I was 12 years old, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, a satellite the size of a basketball that weighed about 184 lb (84 kg). The US government calculated that the Russian rockets were bigger than ours! There could be a science and engineering gap between the US and the Soviet Union. I believe this crisis was one of the best things that ever happened to America. It certainly impacted my generation. Young people were encouraged to pursue careers in science and engineering, and fellowships to do so were plentiful. My high school experience was formative. Boston College High School was a college-preparatory school. We took 4 years of Latin and 2 years of Greek, along with German, math, chemistry, and physics—the whole deal. I carried out my first science project as a freshman and I loved it. With 4 h of homework every evening, I learned how to study and how to learn. I was prepared to succeed in college, and I feel I have been coasting downhill ever since. I then attended Boston College as a chemistry major and have great memories doing undergraduate research in the summer before my senior year. I discovered the fun of not knowing the result of an experiment. It was like going to the racetrack! Thank you to the National Science Foundation for those undergraduate summer research fellowships.

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