Avoid Boring People Part 9

1. Use first names as soon as possible 2. Ba.n.a.l thoughts necessarily also dominate clever minds 3. Work on Sundays 4. Exercise exorcises intellectual blahs 5. Late summer experiments go against human nature

Chapter 5. FROM OBSERVING FEO SZILARD AND MAX DELBRuCK.

1. Have a big objective that makes you feel special 2. Sit in the front row when a seminar's t.i.tle intrigues you 3. Irreproducible results can be blessings in disguise 4. Always have an audience for your experiments 5. Avoid boring people 6. Science is highly social 7. Leave a research field before it bores you

Chapter 6. FROM POSTDOCTORAL YEARS AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY.

1. Choose an objective apparently ahead of its time 2. Work on problems only when you feel tangible success may come in several years 3. Never be the brightest person in a room 4. Stay in close contact with your intellectual compet.i.tors 5. Work with a teammate who is your intellectual equal 6. Always have someone to save you

Chapter 7. FROM THE FIRST YEARS ON HARVARD'S FACULTY.

1. Bring your research into your lectures 2. Challenge your students' abilities to move beyond facts 3. Have your students master subjects outside your expertise 4. Never let your students see themselves as research a.s.sistants 5. Hire s.p.u.n.ky lab helpers 6. Academic inst.i.tutions do not easily change themselves

Chapter 8. FROM THE SECURITY OF BEING RECENTLY TENURED.

1. Teaching can make your mind move on to big problems 2. Lectures should not be unidimensionally serious 3. Give your students the straight dope 4. Encourage undergraduate research experience 5. Focus departmental seminars on new science 6. Join the editorial board of a new journal 7. Immediately write up big discoveries 8. Travel makes your science stronger

Chapter 9. FROM WORKING FOR PSAC.

1. Exaggerations do not void basic truths 2. The military is interested in what scientists know, not what they think 3. Don't back schemes that demand miracles 4. Controversial recommendations require political backing

Chapter 10. FROM BEING ENn.o.bLED IN STOCKHOLM.

1. Buy, don't rent, a suit of tails 2. Don't sign pet.i.tions that want your celebrity 3. Make the most of the year following announcement of your prize 4. Don't antic.i.p.ate a flirtatious Santa Lucia girl 5. Expect to put on weight after Stockholm 6. Avoid gatherings of more than two n.o.bel Prize winners 7. Spend your prize money on a home

Chapter 11. FROM BAD DECISIONS MADE IN HARVARD YARD.

1. Success should command a premium 2. Channel rage through intermediaries 3. Be prepared to resign over inadequate s.p.a.ce 4. Have friends close to those who rule 5. Never offer tenure to pract.i.tioners of dying disciplines 6. Become the chairman 7. Ask the dean only for what he can give

Chapter 12. FROM BEING EDITED BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS.

1. Be the first to tell a good story 2. A wise editor matters more than a big advance 3. Find an agent whose advice you will follow 4. Use snappy sentences to open your chapters 5. Don't use autobiography to justify past actions or motivations 6. Avoid imprecise modifiers 7. Always remember your intended reader 8. Read out loud your written words

Chapter 13. FROM WATCHING TOP SCIENCE EMERGE IN THE BIOLOGICAL FABS 1. Two obsessions are one too many 2. Don't take up golf 3. Races within the same building bring on heartburn 4. Close compet.i.tors should publish simultaneously 5. Share valuable research tools

Chapter 14. FROM MANAGING CANCER RESEARCH.

1. Accept leaders.h.i.+p challenges before your academic career peaks 2. Run a benevolent dictators.h.i.+p 3. Manage your scientists like a baseball team 4. Don't make midseason trades 5. Only ask for advice that you will later accept 6. Use your endowment to support science, not for long-term salary support 7. Promote key scientists faster than they expect 8. Schedule as few appointments as possible 9. Don't be shy about showing displeasure 10. Walk the grounds

Chapter 15. FROM HEADING THE COLD SPRING HARBOR FABORATORY.

1. Avoid boring people 2. Delegate as much authority as possible 3. Inst.i.tutions are either moving forward or they are moving backward 4. Always buy adjacent property that comes up for sale 5. Attractive buildings project inst.i.tutional strength 6. Have wealthy neighbors 7. Be a friend to your trustees 8. All take and no give will disenchant your benefactors 9. Never appear upset when other people deny you their money 10. Avoid being photographed 11. Never dye your hair or use collagen 12. Make necessary decisions before you have to

ILl.u.s.tRATION CREDITS.

George Band: 111 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives: 40,49,57, 64,103,149,244 (top), 251, 254,260,281,288,290 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives, Barbara McClintock Collection: 59 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives, James D. Watson Collection: 3,5,7, 8,9,10,14,29,30, 81, 87, 89,107,175,176,183,184, 185,244 (bottom), 268,287,308 Photo by Manny Delbruck: 307 Rachel Glaeser: 100 From the photo collection of Russell H. Hart, Jr., West Lafayette, Indiana. Photo taken by Russell H. Hart, Sr., deceased: 12 Harvard University Archives: 219,321 National Library of Medicine: 298 The n.o.bel Foundation 1962:188 Richard T. Payne: 32 Rockefeller Archive Center: 108 Rick Stafford: 209 University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication: 13 James D. Watson: 126, 140, 146, 214, 265, 329

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

James D. Watson was director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York from 1968 to 1993 and is now its chancellor. He was the first director of the National Center for Human Genome Research of the National Inst.i.tutes of Health, from 1989 to 1992. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, he has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, the 1962 n.o.bel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.