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Shinya Yamanaka
Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Shinya Yamanaka: I was an orthopedic surgeon, and my first failure was that I was not good at doing surgery, and that failure gave me an opportunity to move to basic science. Then my first major was pharmacology, and in pharmacology we only use many inhibitors and stimulators, all just drugs. And any drug cannot be 100 percent specific and 100 percent effective. So although I did many, many experiments, I did not obtain the answer, because the drugs I used weren't specific enough. So that was kind of my second failure in my career. But that second failure got me interested in knockout mice, mouse technology. So I think failure is important in my career.
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Shinya Yamanaka
Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Shinya Yamanaka: Usually to find a job in the States -- from Japan -- usually you have to ask your professor in Japan to recommend some place. But unfortunately, at that time, my professor -- my mentor in Japan -- did not know any labs working on knockout mice. So I did not get any good recommendations. So I had to apply for many positions, which I learned from scientific journals such as Nature and Science. I applied to -- I forget -- like 20 or 30 different universities and laboratories in the States. And UCSF -- University of California at San Francisco -- was the first to give me an opportunity. That was why I ended up coming to San Francisco.
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Shinya Yamanaka
Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Shinya Yamanaka: I really had hard times, so I was about to quit doing science. I was about to go back to clinics, but again, I was lucky to find another position, in Nara. Nara is very close to Osaka. It's only one hour by car. There's another university in Nara, and I was lucky enough to find a position as an associate professor over there. The funding was much better, and the scientific atmosphere was much better over there. That means there are many, many good scientists in that university in Nara. So without that promotion, probably I [would have] quit my scientific career.
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Chuck Yeager
First Man to Break the Sound Barrier
Chuck Yeager: The X-1, to me, was a sort of a "fly twice a week" airplane. It took two or three days to reduce the data from your flight. It was a complex airplane that gets serviced with liquid oxygen and alcohol and gaseous nitrogen. And in the meantime, I'm flying about 15 other airplanes every day, on different test programs, so it was a hard grind. The X-1 was a pleasure to fly, because you took the whole day to do it. That particular flight, I think was on a Tuesday. On the weekends, there at Muroc, as it was called then, we used to go out to Pancho Barnes's. She had a rodeo grounds, swimming pool, motel and a good restaurant. You'd go out there and unwind. And I took Glennis out there, I think, on a Saturday night. We loved to ride horses, so we went out after dinner and were riding horses and chasing each other. Coming back, somebody closed a gate, it was dark and I didn't see it, so my horse hit the fence and flipped me, and I broke a couple of ribs. And that was on a Saturday night. Sunday I moped around, and then Monday, I had to go into the base and I went to a local doctor there, and he said, "You've got two busted ribs. I'll tape you up." And it really didn't make that much difference in flying the airplane, because it's not strenuous other than handling it with your hands and feet on the rudder pedals and the control surfaces and the loading pressure domes and turning switches on, and things like that. So my only problem was, it was painful to get into the airplane, because you had to come down a ladder and go through a little hole on the right side. But then the hard part was closing the door once old Jack Ridley came down the ladder and held the door against the right side. You had a lever. It took both hands all you could do it. I couldn't handle it with my right side, so he made me about a ten-inch long broom stick that I could stick in the end of the door handle to give me that mechanical advantage. That's the way we solved the problem. So that really didn't make much difference.
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Chuck Yeager
First Man to Break the Sound Barrier
I didn't go straight back to my squadron when I got to Spain. I was held in sort of a secure house, where you couldn't get out, until they interrogated you to make sure you were an American flyer. You know, they wanted your whole story. Where you got shot down, the outfit that you were with, and then they brought a pilot down from my squadron to identify me, and to make sure that I was who I said I was. Then they started publishing orders on me to go back to the United States. That's when I sort of backed off and said, "I don't want to go home, I want to go back to my squadron and fight." And they said, "You can't because the rules prohibit it." Fortunately, the invasion was just coming along, and when the invasion occurred, the resistance forces surfaced, and General Eisenhower, whom I had worked my way all the way up to see, said, "Okay, go back."
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Robert Zemeckis
Motion Picture Production
I got accepted by the Film School, but I hadn't heard anything from the University. And my grades were just absolutely not good enough to get into USC. And so I got this congratulatory letter from the Film School, and about three days later it kept gnawing at me that it didn't feel right. So I called the university, and I spoke to my evaluator. And I guess she was a graduate student or something. And she said, "Oh, no, no, no. We didn't accept you. Your grades aren't good enough." And I said, "But I got this letter." And she said, "Oh, the Film School. They keep doing that. We keep telling them not to do that." And I realized at that moment that this was it, that I had to do something. So launched into this impassioned plea to accept me. I mean, I said, "Look. I'm in the Film School. How can you do this to me? I'll go to summer school," which I did, "And get some of these grades up." And all these things. And at the end of the conversation I basically talked her into it. I mean, I just have this image of some graduate student being on the end of the phone who put a little check in a box and changed the course of my life. I mean, it's a scene out of a movie.
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