Richard has always been regarded as a genius. He was only 27 when he became a professor, and was elected as an academician of the American Academy of Sciences at the age of 37. 199 1 year, he and linda buck separated the gene family of olfactory receptor. This discovery guides people's research and understanding of smell today.
The problem that can be overcome is not attractive.
Almost everyone who knows Richard can feel his superhuman wisdom. His sharp eyes make people feel uncomfortable, but his incredible understanding deeply attracts you. Anyone who has seen him will leave a deep impression on him. This is a passionate person who loves opera and literature. He likes and collects the works of many contemporary painters; But what attracted him most was science.
During the eight years of working with him, he worked from 9 am to 9 pm every day, 7 days a week, almost without interruption. He reads a lot of literature in his work and spends a long time discussing problems with students and postdoctoral students. In life, the laboratory is the most exciting and relaxing place for him.
Richard easily loses interest in what he already knows. He is interested in problems that no one has touched or that others think are too difficult to solve. He often said: "Those really attractive topics are impossible to overcome, and those that can be overcome are unattractive."
As early as 1980s, Richard became interested in neurobiology under the influence of Eric Kandel, another Nobel Prize winner from Columbia University. Analyzing the function of brain at gene and molecular level can provide a breakthrough for scientific explanation of human behavior. The key of this kind of experiment is to determine which molecules are working in the brain. Since the mid-1980s, he began to isolate genes encoding neurotransmitter receptors, hoping to further explore the process of information circulation in the brain. After unremitting efforts, his laboratory finally isolated 5ht(5- hydroxytryptamine) receptor and NMDA receptor. These two genes play a key role in controlling people's emotions and learning and memory respectively. In order to isolate the receptor gene, he invented the method of expression cloning. This method has been widely used in gene determination.
At the same time, he became interested in the mechanism of smell. Knowing little about the olfactory system, he intuitively thought it was a very interesting question. Humans can recognize thousands of smells. These smells contain thousands of different chemical components. How these smells are perceived, and how sensory information travels from the nose to the brain and eventually causes our behavioral reactions. From 65438 to 0988, linda buck (then a postdoctoral fellow in our laboratory) also became interested in smell. Using the latest research achievement of molecular biology at that time-polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Richard and Linda isolated olfactory genes by degenerate PCR. This discovery and subsequent related work were finally recognized by the Nobel Prize jury.
His scientific research is guided by interest.
When the question "How does the sense of smell come into being" caught his attention, it was a complete mystery. On this issue, there are many hypotheses in academic circles: some people think that each smell corresponds to a receptor; Others think that there are only a few receptors, and each receptor can be stimulated by a variety of smells. Richard believes that the fundamental solution to the problem lies in determining the receptor gene. Experiments show that there are about 1000 kinds of odor receptors in mammals. He and Linda later proved that each neuron expresses a receptor gene, and each receptor neuron only responds to a few specific molecules. Each smell is a mixture of many different molecules, and different smells will stimulate specific receptor neurons with different combinations. This group of stimulated neurons send signals to the brain, and then the brain analyzes and integrates them, and finally produces the sense of smell.
Richard changed from a molecular biologist to a neurobiologist in his unremitting research on the mechanism of olfactory production. His scientific research has always been interest-oriented and has never been limited by the research field. From molecular biology to cancer, from immunology to AIDS, until recently neurobiology and neurodevelopmental biology.
In the past five years, he was no longer satisfied with understanding only the ions and channels related to neuronal signal transduction, but began to pay attention to the most challenging topic in the field of neurobiology-neurocoding. There are 1000 billion neurons in the human brain, and information is transmitted to the brain through sensory nerves, which causes human behavior after analysis and editing. How are these sensory information encoded and decrypted? This key problem has attracted generations of scientists. Richard decided to use fruit flies as animal models to solve this problem by studying the mechanism of olfactory system, and this idea became possible with the arrival of another Tsinghua graduate, Jing Wong. Richard and others spent a lot of time reading the literature, and then we discussed the model and designed the experiment. In the end, the efforts paid off-Jing Wong's experiment was a great success, and Richard's model gradually gained wide recognition in this field.
Eccentric genius
Richard is famous for his eccentricity. He is thin and tall. Every day he shouts "data, do you have data?" Sometimes he will stare at you and ask, "Don't you have anything interesting to tell me?" If your answer catches his attention, he will sit down and logically analyze the problem with you, and often discuss the subsequent experimental design. When we are busy doing experiments or sorting out data, we will directly say to him, "Go away, Richard, I am busy." He will walk away, but he will tell you a joke before he leaves.
Although he can act like a complete gentleman, he never pays attention to social etiquette in the laboratory, which makes him feel at home. He won't miss a chance to ridicule, ridicule and belittle others. He often gets lost in thought when talking to others, and then walks away without apologizing. He would answer some questions like this: "This is the stupidest idea I have ever heard."
Richard sometimes acts like a naughty boy. He often loses his temper and yells at others when he is in a bad mood. He also plays tricks on others. His favorite thing is to make up "data" when chatting, which seems to be true. When others are stunned by this "new discovery", he will grin and enjoy the fun of his little prank. Those of us who know him very well will soon find that the "data" is fabricated, so we help him "cheat" together, pretend to discuss "important discoveries" and enjoy the interesting reaction of the unsuspecting victims.
It is this childlike innocence that makes him as curious as a child and does not believe in authority and achievements. He created an atmosphere in the laboratory that can cultivate broad horizons, rich creativity and unique opinions. This kind of atmosphere urges everyone in the laboratory to think about novel problems and find novel solutions.
"Rock-solid" scientific research
Richard is also famous for his strictness. There are two atmospheres in his laboratory: one is to constantly pursue new discoveries and ask new questions; It is also extremely important to dare to criticize any idea without mercy.
He will look you straight in the eye and tell you mercilessly that the experimental result is terrible. He will ask you to go back, strictly control and do the whole experiment again. All the experimental results must be carefully checked several times before they are finally published. During my work in the laboratory, he always insisted on checking all the original data. Sometimes he will check my experimental records or look at my results directly under the microscope.
Other scientists may publish more than a dozen articles a year, while Richard generally only publishes 1 ~ 2 articles a year. Because the subject is difficult and requires high experimental data, students or postdoctoral students working in his laboratory spend an average of seven or eight years on a research project. His published articles have stood the test of time, and many of them have become classics. He once said, "I will not only get the correct answers, but also prove the correctness of these answers through experiments." It is this rigorous academic attitude that makes some of Richard's colleagues describe his scientific research as "rock solid".
The future is yours.
On June 6th, 2004, 10, Richard returned from California, and all the laboratory staff held a celebration banquet to celebrate his winning the Nobel Prize. During the dinner, he gracefully toasted everyone and said, "This honor does not belong to me, but to you. I just accept the prize on your behalf. " Recalling the exciting moments brought by the new discoveries in the laboratory over the years, he said, "When I found the new discoveries, I already got my reward." The best thing in scientific research is to discover things that have not been discovered before. "
He looked at the students sitting around the table and said, "See his students succeed."
In fact, he has trained many successful students. Among his students and postdoctoral fellows, more than 20 taught in first-class universities and research institutes, 5 became members of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and 5 were elected to the National Academy of Sciences, among which linda buck shared the Nobel Prize with him.
In the past 13 years, Richard recruited four students and postdoctoral fellows from China, three of whom became independent researchers. These three people are all from the Biology Department of Tsinghua University. The more leisure they have, the more they have published very high-quality articles with him.
As Richard has said many times, "The future of science belongs to you, young China people. Go ahead.