Elizabeth Blackburn Interview (page: 6 / 8) Nobel Prize in Medicine	Print Interview

In your early years, Dr. Greider, were there any books that particularly inspired you? What did you like to read?

Carol Greider: I can't think of any particular books. There were later on. I can remember things that we were assigned in high school, and stuff like that, but I don't recall anything in particular. I have a hard time remembering what I liked reading back then. I think I sort of project what I like reading now on to what I must have liked reading then. I think I spent a lot of the time in high school just trying to keep focused, and be able to set my goals and go somewhere, and keep doors open that I wanted to keep open.

Was there any stigma attached to a woman going into science when you were growing up?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Carol Greider: I do recall that when I was in seventh and eighth grade, getting straight A's in science, that I was teased a fair amount. "What are you going to do, become a scientist? Why did you get another A?" And I remember vehemently denying that. "No, it was easy, so I got an A because it was easy. I'm not going to become a scientist." When you're teased, you deny it, but it didn't stop me from really doing what I wanted in the end, but I do recall having that reaction.

Why was it such a horrible idea to become a scientist? Where was that coming from?

Carol Greider: I think it was a social reaction. I remember a group of students teasing me about the fact that I had gotten A's all semester in this, and therefore, "She must want to be a scientist." I said, "No, no," I was just -- you know.

Did they think it was too serious? Too brainy or something like that?

Carol Greider: I don't know if I specifically thought it was too brainy. I think it was more of a social reaction to being teased, just to deny that that was my end goal.

But you did go on to major in biology in college. Was there a particular teacher, or someone else, who inspired or influenced you in that direction?

I have been influenced at a number of different points along the way by people that were very interesting. When I got to Santa Barbara there was a woman I met, Bea Sweeney, who was a biologist there, and I was very much captivated by her. My father and my mother had actually known her from their own scientific travels, so I was set up with her, to get a tour of the campus when I was touring campuses during high school. She was a very captivating person. So I pretty much went to Santa Barbara because I wanted to work with her in some capacity. They had a special college that she was involved with there, and it was through my interactions with her that I then began to learn what I was really interested in.

And what was that?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Carol Greider: I tried a lot of different things actually. I thought that I might be interested in ecology, and so she (Beatrice Sweeney) set me up in a lab with an ecologist. The most important thing that she did for me was to emphasize how important it was to get into a lab early on. She got me into a lab as a freshman, so as a result I was able to try out a whole bunch of different labs. I worked in maybe four or five different labs as an undergraduate, and then it was pretty clear to me what I liked doing, because it's easy to tell when you're in -- at least for me, when I'm in doing something -- what it is that I'm good at and what I enjoy, which I think are mutually reinforcing. It wasn't until I got into a biochemistry lab -- I worked in Wes Wilson's lab on microtubule dynamics -- that I really knew that that's what I liked. So I didn't really have any concept of biochemistry or molecular biology before I went to college.

Tell us more about meeting Dr. Blackburn and how you ended up working in her lab.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Carol Greider: There have been a number of instances when I've made choices having to do with people that I like to interact with. So I think of one, my choice to go to Santa Barbara, because I had met Bea Sweeney, and I really liked my interaction with her, and she ended up being my advisor there. And then, when I was interviewing to go to graduate school, I interviewed at Caltech and at Berkeley. And I did the Caltech interviews, about ten interviews with different professors, and then a couple of weeks later went to Berkeley. So by then I had a sense of talking to people, what it was like doing these interviews for graduate school, and I was just very struck by my interactions with Liz and was really excited about science. So again, I made up my mind then that I was going to go to Berkeley, and not go to Caltech, and that what I wanted to do was to work in her lab. But again, that wasn't necessarily a guarantee that I was going to be able to do that. It wasn't like we had some agreement. It wasn't for many months later that that worked out.

What attracted you about what she was doing and who she was?

Carol Greider: I think both the science and my interaction with her. My interest in the science when we would discuss things. I could see connections being made in my mind about what was going on. It's probably a combination of what she was describing in her research, and who she was, and who I was. I thought I wanted to be in that environment, so I did what I could to get there.

Dr. Blackburn, when the two of you discovered the enzyme telomerase, did you imagine that this could have huge applications in medicine?

Elizabeth Blackburn: I didn't really think to the medical applications. The excitement was more, "Ah, this is understanding how something is working," but I think it has always been true in biology.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. You always know, in a corner of your mind, that certain things in basic sciences are going to end up with unexpected ramifications, but it wasn't consciously a situation of saying, "Well, we are going to set out and study aging. We are going to set out and study cancer." And I think this is very typical of how much science happens, because when you are trying to be innovative, and trying to kind of push back what we understand, you know that there is going to be an unpredictable nature to how things will work out. We still don't know how this will work out in terms of medical applications, but I think it's something that's caught the imagination of people, and it's certainly something that should definitely be looked at more, because we have very blunt weapons against cancer these days. We don't have great weapons against cancer. Anything that looks promising should be tried, and there are certain aspects of telomeres and telomerase that are very, very germane to cancer, for example, or any situation where cells keep on multiplying.

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