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James Thomson
Father of Stem Cell Research
If you could take an embryo that hasn't yet implanted from a mouse, and one's from a black mouse, and take another embryo from a white mouse and you just nudge them together, they form one mouse. And that adult mouse has black and white patches along it. And it basically has potentially four different parents, but it's all one integrated mouse. And I was just fascinated that embryogenesis was so regulative that you could take two individuals, put them together, and get this single individual. And that degree of self-regulation ultimately is what allows embryonic stem cells to be derived. I certainly wasn't thinking about that at the time, but I just really thought that experiment was fascinating and wanted to be in that field.
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James Thomson
Father of Stem Cell Research
James Thomson: I think the cells are neat, right? I can't tell you precisely why, but I think it's good, whatever you work on, to just think it's cool, right? And I really hope it does help people someday. But it's also not the reason I go into work today and do my work. It's just because I think that thing is really interesting, and I want to work on that. But then, when I step back a little bit and look like, you know, what I want to accomplish over my career, I very much hope that what I do in my laboratory does benefit people. I think my career would be extremely satisfying if that's true, but I don't think about that day to day. Which is probably the patience thing, again, is that I'm more focused on the questions I'm trying to address and trying to do as efficiently as possible, but I'm not thinking about the direct translational benefits of my work every day.
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Clyde Tombaugh
Discoverer of Planet Pluto
I have this feeling of wonder what it's like to kind of look there and just sweep around through the Milky Way and say, "Oh there's hundreds and hundreds of stars and star clusters." It gives me a feeling of great elation. It's a therapy for me, just idle, plowing through the sky. It's fun. I wonder about all the wonderful things that must be going on there that we don't see, realizing there are thousands and thousands -- millions -- of alien civilizations out there, doing things, maybe something like we are. This is something you think about.
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Charles Townes
Inventor of the Maser & Laser
Charles Townes: I like to try to understand things. You know, that's a very great human drive, curiosity. What is this world here for? What's it doing? What makes it work? How does it work? It's like solving puzzles. But they're interesting puzzles, in that once you find out something new, in science, then it's the possession of everybody. And everybody else then builds on that. So you're not just solving some puzzle that everybody else has solved once, and then you tear it apart and it has to be solved again. In science, you solve a puzzle, understand something new, and it's exhilarating, and it's everybody's property then, which everybody can use. So it's a permanent contribution.
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Charles Townes
Inventor of the Maser & Laser
We had pets. I would raise animals. I would catch wildlife and raise them. I did carpentry. I also did some electronics and I collected stamps. Classification and understanding things was a great hobby of mine. In almost anything, I would sort of try to identify and collect and try to make work. When one of my cousins, who is an engineer, gave me an old radio set, that was just a great thing. And we'd tinker with the radio set, and made it work. My father used to bring home some broken clocks from a store of a friend he knew, a clockmaker, and we'd have broken clocks. And then we would play with them, and fix them and use the wheels and so on. So I enjoyed building things and making things.
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Charles Townes
Inventor of the Maser & Laser
I liked mathematics. I liked biology. I didn't like chemistry quite as much, because it was -- at that time I was taught a kind of cookbook type of chemistry, not the exciting chemistry which is current today. But physics had so much logic in it. Such firm, demanding logic. One could really figure things out. That particularly attracted me. But I liked the other sciences too. However, at some point I had to decide. Actually, I didn't decide until fairly late. The first course of physics I took was as a sophomore in college. And it was only the end of that year that I decided, "Yes, physics really is what I think I really want to do." I would have been very happy in biology or some other sciences too, I'm sure.
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Charles Townes
Inventor of the Maser & Laser
Charles Townes: What I particularly liked about physics was the tight logic. That you could look at something, and if you figured it out correctly, thought about it carefully, you could be pretty sure. "Yes, this is right," or something else isn't right. Lots of new things to explore, but they were explored through logic, experimentation, but experimentation based on certain logical ideas. So it was the firmness and the definiteness which one could decide what really is right, I think, that attracted me. Plus the fact that it was dealing with what I thought were important ideas. Mathematics appealed to me, and I enjoyed mathematics, but I preferred to do something that involved the real world around me. Real objects, like physics. Even though that also involved mathematics, it was dealing with a sort of real life a little bit more, I felt, than mathematics.
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Charles Townes
Inventor of the Maser & Laser
Charles Townes: People tell me that I work hard. I never feel that I do particularly, because it's fun. I always say, "Well, I've never worked hard in my life." I'm busy, but most of what I do is enjoyable. It isn't that it's not tedious to some people, and so on, and of course I have routine to do, but I don't mind it. I just don't feel that I'm put upon. I spend a lot of time, but it's fun. It's a very intensive hobby. I would say it's my most serious hobby. I have lots of hobbies, but the one permanent one is science, physics. So yes, I spend a lot of time, and I would agree with Edison, you have to work very hard and intensively. But it's not what the ordinary person calls work to me. It's really interesting, fun, enjoyable, exciting to be thinking about these things.
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