When the Los Alamos National Lab started searching for an eminent scientist to lead its Human Genome Center last fall, biology group leader George Bell told The Scientist (Sept. 5, 1988, page 2): “We’re looking for someone of [Charles] Cantor’s stature.” It was a reference to the well-known Columbia University geneticist whom Lawrence Berkeley Lab had just hired to run its own program. Last month Los Alamos named Robert Moyzis, an in-house scientist who has headed the lab’s genetics program for five years, to the job. But although Moyzis recently led the Los Alamos team that discovered the genetic material that marks the ends of human chromosomes, his reputation among academics is not on a par with Cantor’s.
What happened? “We had a person of equal or even higher stature [than Cantor] lined up, but after anguishing over it, he eventually turned us down,” says Bell. One problem, he explains, ...
