Nobel Prize Winner - Do they think differently? (Aug/31/2006 )

Hi everyone,

If you work in a Nobel Prize Winner's lab, please share your lab experience with us?

Does Nobel Prize Winner think differently compare to other researchers?
Is he/she very intelligent?
Does he/she often come up with some crazy idea?
Does he/she work very hard?

Thanks in advance.

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I dunno about this and am just stopping by as this topic sounds very interesting.

Till now what I have in my mind is that all the great things in research happen by accident.

So, in my lab, all I am waiting for is some accident to happen

Cheers

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hi Minnie Mouse
i don't think that those winners are so different from us
actually, some are talented, especially poets and authors
winners of science are hard workers, have long experiences, wide imagination

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How mayny Nobel Prize winners do you think actually do the work themselves.

I know at least two examples in which a PhD student and/or PostDoc had the idea but their supervisor got the Nobel. It'll always work out that way. If you cured cancer (never happen) as a PhD student you'd get little recognition, but your PI would be the belle-of-the-ball (shouldn't that be 'beau' for men).

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this is not fair, they have to share the prize with their students
even papers, students kill their selves working to get good results, and when papers are published, the name of the supervisor must be outlined in bold..

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Dear All,

In general Nobel prize winners are ambitious early in their careers and are fortunate to work with eminent scientists who mentor and nurture their talents. They are extremely hard work, driven and totally focused on their work. Of course they build up groups themselves and surround themselves with the best people. This goes from the top post docs, to highly skilled technicians who perform most of the critical experiments.
I have only experience of working in science and for 2 nobel prize winners who were in charge of departments I worked in at Wellcome Foundation. All I can say is that they seem to be able to see the "Big picture". Alot of scientific research does not seem to result in a mjor advancement of understanding human disease and underlying mechanisms. The 2 workers mentioned above made huge discoveries and led to therapeutic advances in the treatment of cardiovascular disease.
As somebody said in a previous post, some areas of research are discovered by accident. Robert Furghott in the early 1980's discovered EDRF only by accident. One of his technicians used to prepare rabbit aorta for gut bath experiments only to find that when administering Acetylcholine, on some days the tissue relaxed, on other days the tissue contracted. Using EM they discovered this was due to the endothelium being intact some days and destroyed on others. This led him to believe an Endothelial Releasing factor was involved and a huge new area of research sprung up and NITRIC OXIDE was discovered. He shared the prize 15 years later with 2 other well known researchers.
To conclude, they are in my experience "special individuals" who contribute massively to our understanding of science.

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I've never worked with a Nobel scientist but I went to a lecture by one last week. It was by Barry Marshall, an aussie scientist who won the 2005 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for his work proving that stomach ulcers were caused by a bacterial infection, not lifestyle factors such as stress.

It was very entertaining. The funniest thing he said was that when he first decided to put forward the idea that an infection caused stomach ulcers he chose to send an abstract to a local medical meeting in his home town of Perth. He received back a response that went something like 'Dear Dr Marshall, we regret to inform you that we cannot accept your abstract as there have been 67 submissions and we only have room for 55". He highlighted the fact that this put his work in the bottom 20% of presentations. He'd kept the rejection notice and showed a copy of it during his lecture.

His advice: Believe in what your doing, be passionate about your work and be nice to the Swiss!

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Dear Karyotyper,

I remember seeing a horizon programme on him years ago and he came over very passionately. He had huge criticism from the scientific community saying how could a bug live and grow under those acidic conditions. The pharmaceutical companies had huge research resources ploughing into H 2 Antagonists like Zantac, they were also funding world wide basic research grants. This aussie was coming along and saying that most stomach ulcers should be treated by cheap effective antibiotics.
I had not realised that he had got the Nobel...... bloody brillant.

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You hit the nail on the head about the drug companies Rhombus. He spent a lot of time talking about how it's in the interests of drug companies to "treat" disease rather than cure disease.

The whole idea is to develop a drug that people must take repeatedly to stay healthy. Don't cure it, treat it! A couple of big drugs in this category is worth billions.

He really seems like a genuinely nice, down to earth guy. Good sense of humour too.

See here for a brief summary.

Cheers.

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And the million dollars to!

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