Protein Synthesis Is A Central Problem For

Since I Essentially Knew Nothing, I Had An Almost Completely Free Choice.

The Major Credit I Think Jim And I Deserve ... Is For Selecting The Right Problem And Sticking To It. It's True That By Blundering About We Stumbled On Gold, But The Fact Remains That We Were Looking For Gold. Both Of Us Had Decided, Quite Independently Of Each Other, That The Central Problem In Molecular Biology Was The Chemical Structure Of The Gene. ... We Could Not See What The Answer Was, But We Considered It So Important That We Were Determined To Think About It Long And Hard, From Any Relevant Point Of View.

In My Experience Most Mathematicians Are Intellectually Lazy And Especially Dislike Reading Experimental Papers. He Seemed To Have Very Strong Biological Intuitions But Unfortunately Of Negative Sign.

It Is Essential To Understand Our Brains In Some Detail If We Are To Assess Correctly Our Place In This Vast And Complicated Universe We See All Around Us.

It Is Not Easy To Convey, Unless One Has Experienced It, The Dramatic Feeling Of Sudden Enlightenment That Floods The Mind When The Right Idea Finally Clicks Into Place. One Immediately Sees How Many Previously Puzzling Facts Are Neatly Explained By The New Hypothesis. One Could Kick Oneself For Not Having The Idea Earlier, It Now Seems So Obvious. Yet Before, Everything Was In A Fog.