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Johnnetta Cole
Past President of Spelman College
I give Mrs. Vance all the credit. Because, as if it were this moment, I remember my first day in first grade. And Miss Vance (She was called, by her friends, Bunny Vance. Not very tall in stature, but a giant in terms, it seemed to us, of knowledge, and compassion, and wisdom) asked that each of us should say our name. And we began to go around the classroom. And I remember it came to my turn, and I stood up as I had been instructed to do and sort of bowed my head a little and mumbled who I was. And Mrs. Vance came directly in front of me, looked me directly into my eyes and said, "Never, ever again mumble who you are. Stand up, feel good about who you are and speak to the world."
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Francis Collins: When I look back on it now, I can see that all the things I learned in college and in graduate school in physical chemistry are enormously helpful to me as I approach this job now (1998) of being Director of the Human Genome Project. That taught me scientific rigor. People who go into biology and medicine I think really are well served to dig deeply into the physical sciences, before they get totally focused on life science. The principles are so important. The insistence on a rigorous analysis of a situation, where you don't settle for sloppy data if you don't have to, is a really useful training, and I cherish that. Even what I did as a graduate student, which was quantum mechanics, is not something I think about anymore. The intellectual process of developing those skills I think was useful in preparing for something else.
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Francis Collins
Presidential Medal of Freedom
It requires, genetics in particular, an interest in sort of the mathematical side of science, because it is a very mathematical part of biology. The way the DNA works, it's just a simple four-letter alphabet, it's like a digital code. And some degree of feeling comfortable with that is a good thing, although one need not be an expert in calculus. I don't think I've use calculus since I became a geneticist, but it's good to have some good familiarity and friendliness with the concepts of probability, for instance.
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Denton Cooley
Pioneer of Heart Transplants
I think that one of the things that's helped me so much in my life -- I've done some writing, you know -- but grammar has always come easy for me since I got that early grounding from a little, attractive teacher in the seventh and eighth grade named Miss Wineheimer. She taught us how to diagram sentences, and taught us the proper way to write. We never were forced to be real strong in composition, but in construction, it was always taught us that we should understand grammar. It disturbs me greatly nowadays when I hear people who are considered to be intelligent, or even intellectual, who can slaughter English grammar. You know, simple little things like using the pronoun "I" when you should be saying "me." And people always think it sounds better to use the first person singular, "I" instead of "me" as the object of a preposition, and so on. All of those slights indicate to me an inadequate educational background.
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Denton Cooley
Pioneer of Heart Transplants
I did, like most young surgeons, practice tying surgical knots. You know, you take some string to your room at night, and you practice tying knots with one hand, or your left hand, and doing that sort of thing. And just thinking about surgery. And, you know, practicing. Get a scalpel, and practice just, say, cutting a piece of meat or something like that. You sort of learn how you want to hold your fingers, and that sort of thing, and try to become graceful when you operate. Because it's sort of that gracefulness and poise at the operating table that inspires others to think that you are an accomplished surgeon. I watched a number of surgeons in this country and abroad, and tried to see what it was about their technique that made them successful, and made them masters of the art.
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