David Botstein''s name came up twice when the PLoS Genetics editors tossed around ideas for potential interviewees, and with
good reason. First, he is now director of an exciting development on the Princeton University campus, the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, which weaves the physical, computational, and biological sciences into a cohesive endeavor. Second, his scientific discoveries have run the gamut of organisms, from phage P22 to yeast to humans. And third, David is no shrinking violet; he has a deeply held opinion about everything, and he isn''t afraid to voice it.
For those of you who are familiar with David, these words will likely fly off the page. There is little need to ply him with pre-formed questions; once you get him going, he is a verbal tsunami. His zeal is legendary, and his delight in people and ideas is palpable.
I met David at his office in the Carl Icahn Laboratory on a chilly February morning after the snow had melted. The building is the elegant design of Rafael Vinoly. Its airy entranceway, which spans the length of the curved glass faade, embraces a small caf, a cylindrical seminar hall, and, jarringly, the 30-year-old lead-clad prototype of a Frank Gehry house, which David aptly refers to as the armadillo. Double-helical shadows are cast by latticed aluminum pillars that hug the portico''s arc, and altogether too stylish, white, Tom Vac and Pierre Paulin Orange Slice chairs populate the space. Yet tucked into a corner were six dowdy Revcos and an ice-o-matic, signaling that this building is not just a pretty face.
I powered up my fancy new digital Marantz recorder, stoked with a high-capacity flash card, and pushed the record button. Here follow excerpts from what proved to be the first in a double-header interview.
Jane Gitschier: Let''s start with the Lewis-Sigler Institute. What are you trying to do here?
David Botstein: Actually, I came here to do something about science education, an experiment, if you like. As you know, I was at MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology for many years and taught undergraduate and graduate courses, and was director of the graduate program. Beth Jones and I invented the whole project lab system. We were instructors at that time 1969, a non-tenure track appointment. You worked in somebody''s lab, but you did teaching.
JG: Whose lab were you in?
DB: I was with Maury Fox. Beth
brought yeast to Boris''s Magasanik lab. I brought P22 to Fox''s lab. We weren''t randomly chosen to do this. I think the idea was that they brought people who were particularly good experimentalists to teach these lab courses.
We were given this really awful course to teach, and we made a proposal to teach it in a better way, which involved major changes in the curriculum, and they the older faculty went along with it. And in fact, I got a job as Assistant Professor out of it.
There is something about teaching that makes you a better researcher. I know this is very countercultural wisdom, but I believed it all along. Luria, Magasanik, and Levinthal all believed it. Levinthal and Luria both had a very strong influence on me in this regard.
That''s one part of the story!
The other part of the story is that through the Academy National Academy of Sciences, I became very
interested in the question of why it is that there are fewer and fewer kids in America who are interested in biology. And through the Academy studies, it became clear from the statistics that the total number of kids interested in any kind of science had been falling for the last 30 years. And the conventional wisdom is that it is all about K12 education.
I don''t believe that for a second.
JG: And why is that?
DB: I''ll tell you the argument. There are three arguments why this is not right.
One is that it is a mistake to think that the high schools were ever so good. There is zero argument to say that they have gotten any