I frequently find myself thinking back to a hastily organized talk given by John Fenn on the morning of his Noble Prize announcement. He gave a retrospective of his career where he gave serendipity and luck a starring role in his success. He spent his career kicking over rocks, and he had been lucky enough to find something interesting underneath a few of them.
As I think back on his comments, I see how his consistent effort to understand and solve problems gave him the insight he needed to develop electrospray ionization. Sure, when you look back you can weave a modest story of how a kid from the back woods of Kentucky bumbled his way to the highest scientific award in the world. But at the heart of that story is a country kid who worked hard every day. He picked up a little something here and a little something there. By themselves those little bits of knowledge may not have been much, but the substantial mass of those little insights made all the difference when it came time to figure out electrospray ionization.
Every day offers valuable training. Just because we may not know what we're training for doesn't make it any less important.
No comments:
Post a Comment