Martin Chalfie: ‘I decided I wasn’t going to be a scientist’
The Nobel prizewinner on breaking a promise to himself and the test he had to pass to receive his medal
When I was 12, I didn’t know what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be. When I was in college, I was a biochemistry major. In part because I had a lot of math classes originally and I could use them for the biochemistry major. Also, we’re talking 1967/68/69, biochemistry at that time sounded sexy, it sounded different. It was new, as opposed to chemistry or biology.
There was something exciting about this idea of biochemistry. But I worked in a lab and I was just miserable. Nothing worked. I didn’t know to ask questions. I didn’t know to seek advice and to seek help. I thought I had to do it all on my own. So I when I left college, I decided I wasn’t going to be a scientist.
I think of myself as a geneticist. One of the joys of doing genetics, of finding mutants and then finding the basis of those mutations, is that when you find a gene, you find out what protein it encodes – and you probably don’t know anything about that protein. Genetics leads one, always, into areas that you have to learn about, that you have to investigate and see what other people have done.