Detective Rummage Investigates

It is very ego-warming to be recognized by quotation. Ever since this first happened to me, I always consult books of quotations to see if I appear there and, of course, I am always looking for opportunities to create epigrams that might appear in future collections. Sometimes, however, it is difficult to trace their source. I recently received an inquiry from an editor who wanted to use a quotation attributed to me in a publication and asked if I knew where it had first appeared. I thought I recalled being the author of the quotation--"Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries, and new ideas, probably in that order"--but could not recollect where or when I had said it. However, I believed I knew how to track it down because I remembered it was quoted in Alan Mackay's collection A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations. This referred to Nature, May 5, 1980. But on checking, I found there is no Nature of that date and I did not relish examining variations of the date and possibly even the name of the journal.There the matter rested, unresolved, until a few weeks ago when I was rummaging through the piles of papers that I have accumulated. There I came across some handwritten notes of a talk I had given at a symposium organized by the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, on March 20, 1980. The symposium celebrated the 10th birthday of the institute and looked forward to the next decade with the title "Biology in the 1980s." My role, however, was to look back on the previous decade. In doing so, according to my notes, I told my audience: "I will ask you to mark again that rather typical feature of the development of our subject; how so much progress depends on the interplay of techniques, discoveries, and new ideas, probably in that order of decreasing importance."So there it was--or something like it. All I had to do was to look up Nature for a report of the meeting. I found it in the issue of June 5, 1980. It was called "Biology in the 1980s, plus or minus a decade" and was written by an old friend, Miranda Robertson. There in the third column appears the somewhat transformed version of what is in my notes. The words "interplay" and "decreasing importance" are omitted and the latter only implied. The mystery had been solved; Mackay had the date wrong by a month.Together with the solution came the sobering realization that some things don't change. Here, reproduced from my notes, are some points I made at the time, together with current annotations:"The continuous invention of a whole range of powerful physical, chemical, and genetic techniques for the analysis of the structure and function of cells means that the answers to many questions can be got by going out into the real world and extracting them. While we can gain enormous satisfaction from that potential ..., its effects are not altogether happy. Many young biologists feel that there are areas of the subject where what counts are the material resources and command of logistics rather than intellectual ability and ingenuity and there is an increasing sense of loss of identity." (Anybody for a large-scale genome-sequencing project?)"One may argue that the symptoms are worse than the disease--if disease it be--but it is necessary for the viability of biology that there should be a choice for young scientists to try to work on difficult problems and to take up the intellectual challenge of unpopular but important areas of biology." (I could say just the same today; in fact, I have done so on numerous recent occasions.)"I hope that the Miescher Institute will allow itself to support those who are before their time and will provide a much-needed home for the encouragement of research into basic biology. For on that depends the future; it will not be made otherwise." (And so it still is.)Twenty years on, young biologists still face many of the same challenges as they did in 1980. And collectors of scientific quotations should feel free to glean further epigrams, preferably with an accurate citation.Sydney Brenner, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, Calif.

Detective Rummage Investigates

It is very ego-warming to be recognized by quotation.

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