A tale of two scientist-gardeners

I gave a short talk to a small gathering for young doctors/dentist and med students from University of Pittsburgh Medical School yesterday; twenty some of us all came from Taiwan, a congenial getting together.

In talking about the evolution of insulin in clinical practice, I mentioned Fred Sanger, who just died at age of 95 in November 2013.  He was the only one ever awarded with Nobel Prizes in chemistry twice; one for the sequencing the amino acids in protein (insulin), the second is sequencing the nucleic acids in DNA (virus Phix 174).  So he is a man of sequence and of consequence.

Sanger’s sequence of amino acids (primary structure of protein), coupled with Linus Pauling’s alpha helix and beta sheet (secondary structure of protein) propelled and accelerated the protein science.  His contribution of genomic research rivaled that of Watson and Crick.  As we know Walter Gilbert (who co-founded Biogen and other bio-tech co) shared with him the Nobel Prize with a different technique of sequencing nucleic acids, but Sanger’s method is more ingenious and efficient and was still used during the early stage of the Human Genome Project.  The Scientific American obituary said Sanger is “Paul Dirac of chemistry”.

Fred Sanger

I also showed many Power Point “slides” of our garden; it is not entirely irrelevant as Fred Sanger spent the rest of his long life gardening when he reached the mandatory retirement age (65) in 1983, thus 30 years of gardening.

Another scientist-gardener is William Lawrence Bragg, who remains the youngest Nobel laureate; he was awarded at age of 25, shared with his dad.  Bragg law of x-ray diffraction made the development of x-ray crystallography possible, greatly advancing the structural science.

 

Bragg’s hobby is literature and gardening.  He missed gardening when he moved from Cambridge to London, so he worked as a gardener on the weekends. One day the old lady (who hired Bragg as the gardener) commented to her guest (who was a faculty in Cambridge University) that her weekend gardener seems very knowledgeable.  The guest took a look into the garden and recognized the gardener as the former director of the Cavendish Lab of Cambridge University.  This is also a story of how a weekend gardener lost his job.

A sea of flowers

紅場廣場佈置色彩艷麗的花海.  A splendid sea of flowers in the Red Square (a photo from my cousin, Dr. 陳英毅)

A few things about Carl Icahn

I mentioned the investor, Carl Icahn on this post (http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-story-of-erbitux-medicine-or.html); there are a few things connected to him, which may be worth your while to read.  Unlike Warren Buffett, who is a value and long term investor, Icahn is a corporate raider, a shareholder activist; completely different style.  The truth is that there is more than one way to a successful investment.

Icahn comes from Far Rockaway, Queens, NYC, so he is Jewish.  He graduated from Far Rockaway High School, which has produced three Nobel laureates (Baruch Blumberg, Richard Feynman and Burton Richter, about whom I have talked in my blog at various times).  By the way, Joyce Brothers was also from Far Rockaway. 

After donating nearly $200 million to Mount Sinai Medical school; the school has since been renamed Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  Icahn did spend two years attending the NYU Medical School, pressed by his mother and dropped out because he “hated it.”  He said his mother would have been proud as his name is now associated with a medical school.  He didn’t want to be just graduated from a medical school; he wanted a medical school named after him.

If I were in the investment or financial service I would pay very close attention to what Icahn has been up to.  His outspokenness comes from the strength as he would accumulate the sizable shares of the company of his target before he became an activist; to have things done his way.  Presently he is trying to have eBay spin off PayPal.  He has since shut up after Apple announced that it has bought back $14 billion of its own stocks in recent downturn of the market; he initially wanted Apple to have $160 billion buy back.  Last year he was also in the fight to get Dell into private ownership.

“I’ll be there” soliloquy in the Grapes of Wrath

This YouTube is what I call “I’ll be there” speech (or more precisely, soliloquy), uttered by Tom Joad (played by Henry Fonda) in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; the highlight and theme of the movie/book.  In 1962, the Nobel Prize committee particularly cited The Grapes of Wrath as the great work leading to the award.  The screenplay is a bit different from the book.  The following is the screenplay; I have changed it from the book, based on the YouTube segment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2JR3FmvVAw

“Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody- and then –”

“Then what, Tom?”

“Then it don’t matter. I’ll be aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where - wherever you can look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.  I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ - I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when the people eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build - I’ll be there. too?”

“I don’ un’erstan’,” Ma said.

“Me neither, mom” said Tom. “It’s jus’ something I been thinkin’ about. Give me your hand, mom.”