Marc Kirschner will probably never win a Nobel Prize. But it's not from a lack of accomplishments. "His lab is probably one of the most exciting places to work," says Bruce Alberts of the University of California, San Francisco, editor-in-chief of Science, and a longtime friend and colleague. "There are so many different things happening. It's incredibly productive and there's a real sense that people are discovering things that are really interesting and important."
So what's the catch? "He works on too many different things," laughs Alberts. The Nobel Foundation generally recognizes individuals for their dedication to one specific problem. "But Marc has got a huge variety of interests and continues to shift from one to the next. Last time I heard him give a seminar, it was on three different, unrelated things."
"The lab is a menagerie," agrees Ray Deshaies, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Caltech and ...
