One day Jim Watson’s parents appeared in my office. They had some other thing to do in New York, no doubt, because they lived in Chicago. They knew I was an ornithologist and I think Jim knew about me and had already acquired a certain admiration for my work. So Ms. Watson asked me, “Jim wants to become an ornithologist. Where should he go for his studies of ornithology?” At that time, of course, everybody went to Cornell. And I said — probably to their surprise — I said, “He shouldn’t study ornithology at all. He should, in his undergraduate career, get a very good basic training in biology. And when, after four years, he was still keen on ornithology, then I would be willing to suggest where you should go for graduate school in ornithology. Maybe other people said the same thing. I don’t credit myself as being the only one who guided his future. Anyhow he did follow just that. He went to a good school — I think it was the University of Chicago — got an excellent training in biology, and of course in the course of that he encountered all sorts of interests, all sorts of problems that are far more interesting than bird watching, and so he never followed up his intention to become an ornithologist, but he became the discoverer of the double helix, all through my giving him good advice!