John Sulston Interview (page: 4 / 7) Nobel Prize in Medicine	Print Interview

What was hard for you growing up?

John Sulston: Growing up? Well, I mentioned religion. That was hard. Perhaps to illustrate the hardness...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. When I went to university and one had student discussions, as one does, and I remember saying to people -- over the endless drinks and coffee and so on, in the evenings -- I would say to people, I said the most important thing I had to do in my life was to decide whether or not I believed in God. And most of them just looked at me blankly and they said, "Huh? What's important about that?" That they had not experienced this. They had not been given the religious upbringing. So it was just something they were aware of. It was not the starting point, it was just something else. So that was -- I had to deal with it because of my father. And I must say, like all adolescents, I worried terribly about my relationships with other people, especially with girls. Again, this is just the story of adolescence, nothing special. One has to go through it and find out how one is, how one can cope with other people.

But you survived it.

John Sulston: I apparently survived, yeah, in very good shape.

We know you went to Cambridge University. What was most important about that experience?

John Sulston: Well, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, it was a little bit of a non-event in terms of the scholastic side. It was not a good period of my life from the point of view of learning. But, as my tutor warned me, it was partly because I went off and did other things. And one thing I very much enjoyed doing was working in the theater. Not on the stage, but as an electrician, in the background doing stuff. But it's part of this wonderful ambience, the wonderful sense of communality that addicts people to theater. The working together in impossible hours and just getting the show to work. That was a wonderful experience.

Could you have been a lighting director for the West End stage?

John Sulston: I think I didn't have the talent for it, but I enjoyed it when I did it. It was fun. You're creating something which is incredibly important at the time, and yet which is also, of course, completely ephemeral, because when you've created that, then you go on and do another one. It has that sense of the huge, but transitory, importance. Which is rather different from the process of science, where it's more like building up bricks, putting things on top of one another and building a wall. It's a very different, complementary experience.

When did you first know what you wanted to do?

John Sulston: Oh well, this really goes back to the early days.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It was just following this idea of inquiry about the natural world. So it was a question of deciding -- or rather putting off deciding -- which piece of science I would be involved in. I just wanted to do it all. I think it was a series of chance events, and I think there's nothing wrong in that. You have a very general direction, but it's the opportunities that come your way to do this or that, that you have to seize, and that will in turn decide what you're going to do. I have little belief, in terms of giving advice, about saying to people, "Well, you should really think it through and this will be the correct career path." I think that's a mistake. I think you should take things as they come. Certainly seize your opportunities, and you need to be rather open, I think, about the range of prospects. Because after all, the things that you know about now, the things that you can predict, are basically over and done with. You can fill in a few gaps. But what you really should be thinking about, or waiting to think about, is the thing you cannot predict now. That's why you have to be open -- but not completely random walking -- about your process.

We've heard you mention openness, communication. Does science require an open society?

John Sulston: It does. I think it absolutely does, and in a strange way, especially in our society today, which I think is being driven too much towards possessiveness in a sort of literal and figurative sense. We have a need to cost everything and own things, and so on. Ideas, now, are being patented and all this kind of thing. I think this is extremely counterproductive. It actually makes life harder and I don't think it's the progressive route. I think science, actually, in a strange way, can offer a kind of morality about this, because it works when you share a lot of basic knowledge. It absolutely rewards and respects those who manage to make progress, but you do it through publication and through acclaim. You don't do it through paying people more. You do it because people are part of a common cause, and the result is the morality of the openness, and you have a sense, always, of the future.

What motivates you? What inspires you? What moves you to do what you do?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. John Sulston: It's broad and narrow. Broadly, there's no question, my whole life, I've been inspired by the advance of understanding. So that includes two components. One is just factual knowledge, because we find out things, we observe and so on. The other, of course, is to integrate and to understand how things work. That's harder. And not everybody does that. Nevertheless, we can all contribute as part of this growth. And I just... looking back, more and more, sometimes when I'm talking, I like to go back and remind people of what happened 400 years ago -- the cosmology. A hundred-fifty years ago -- evolution. Things like this, which really affect the human condition. The way we think about ourselves. These are not technological advances, these are philosophical advances. They completely affect the way we think about ourselves and ourselves in the universe. And we're going to do a lot more of this. For example, we're all talking a lot now about how we're going to understand much more about the brain. I'm sure that's true. We don't know how far we can take it. We don't know how long it'll take. We're going to understand a lot more about the brain. That's going to be very challenging. Because that really is the innermost part of being human. But this progression of understanding -- which I feel is so amazing -- and to be part of this is great. So that's a broad motivation. The narrow motivation that everybody needs is to get that pat on the back from their peers, I think. So you can have satisfaction in knowing you've contributed something to the whole, but I think there's very few people who are free of this desire, and love, really, of having their peers acclaim them. And so I think that's an important part of it as well. And the two together make for a wonderful collective of people working.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

Does history matter, in science?

John Sulston: History matters in a certain sense, not so much in science. History matters only in the sense that you have a firm basis for what you know. It doesn't actually matter how that came about. The progress of science and the individual motivations actually are quite messy. I've given you mine, but others may have different ones. Rivalry certainly plays a part. I would like to think it doesn't play so much part in mine, but certainly there have been times when intense rivalries have driven people. But none of that matters. It doesn't matter how it came about. All that matters is that the final result is documented clearly, is open to criticism, and therefore if it stands that criticism, is a solid part of the whole. So one always advances.

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