My father was a research scientist in tropical medicine, so I always assumed I would be a scientist, too. I felt that medicine was too vague and inexact, so I chose physics.
Research into manned spaceflight is shifting from low-Earth orbit to destinations much further away, like Mars and the asteroid belt. But society will have to invent many new technologies before it can plausibly send people to those distances.
Asthma research is a lot better and new medicines are always coming out to help young people.
Note to academics: Aristarchus' track record of astronomical research would probably have guaranteed him tenure somewhere, if tenure had been invented. His stack of reprints included measuring the distances of the Moon and Sun.
In the field of astronomy in the mid-'60s, quasars were very sexy objects - gigantic, star-like masses about which little was known. I was a graduate research student at Cambridge working towards my Ph.D. and chose quasars as the subject for my thesis. Part of my project involved surveying the sky for them using a radio telescope.
I am always trying to find fabrics that are more friendly to the environment - working with Virgin Atlantic, they managed to research into this and find more eco fabrics.
While the most disadvantaged students - most often poor students of color - receive the most considerable academic benefits from attending diverse schools, research demonstrates that young people in general, regardless of their background, experience profound benefits from attending integrated schools.
Sometimes I write less than I'd like but do research. Other times, editor's notes or a copy-edited manuscript or page proofs for a forthcoming novel mean that I need to put my attentions elsewhere for a day or two, but I always come back to writing.
Yes, in all my research, the greatest leaders looked inward and were able to tell a good story with authenticity and passion.
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.
Imagine how foolish you'd look if, like one clever salesman who once pitched to me, you tried to license your product to a big industry player without knowing they just launched a competing product. With the right background research, he could have avoided that and other landmines - and so can you.
Many Nobel Prizes are awaiting good research to understand and explain the many mysteries of our bodies, such as the basic mechanism of memory or imagination.
I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases.
Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms - recombinant DNA.
I used ribosomes from very, very robust bacteria under very, very active conditions and found a way - I actually took advantage of research done before me at the Weizmann, the same institute I am now - how to preserve their activity and their integrity while they crystallized.
I think even in bad times it's good to keep some money going into research. And that's the purpose of the whole space program. It's not just exploration and going to see how far we can go out into space and keep people alive and bring them back, although exploration certainly has its place.
I wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life until I graduated high school. And even now, I'm still like, 'Maybe I'll just quit the biz and go to Santa Cruz and study marine biology and have my own research center in the Bahamas.' Yeah, I'm sure it would be just that smooth.
I get heartfelt thanks from all kinds of people. Today I heard from a waitress in Georgia who has lost her job and is trying to figure out how her local bank can change the terms on her credit card, and I heard from a physicist at a major research university who wants to explain a better theory of financial stress tests.
I hated being a junior investment banker. I loved the research business, the wealth management business.
Research has shown that a barren environment is much more damaging to baby animals than it is to adult animals. It does not hurt the adult animals the same way it damages babies.
