I am greatly indebted to Yale for molding me into a scientist. Although Yale's strength in the sciences was not widely appreciated among undergraduates, I found inspiration from many brilliant chemistry and biology professors there, starting even in my freshman year. My Chem 14 course was taught by Prof. R. Stephen Berry, who later (1983) received a MacArthur Fellowship. In the Sterling Chemistry Laboratory I frequently passed in the hallway Prof. Lars Onsager, who later (1968) received a Nobel Prize for his work done at Yale. In Biology 11, I was thrilled by Prof. Harold Morowitz's lectures describing DNA, RNA, protein biosynthesis, and the exciting initial discoveries of Marshall Nirenberg at the NIH on the deciphering on the genetic code (for amino acids in protein biosynthesis). In Biology 11 I found a passion for biochemistry and molecular biology. However, I stuck with my original plan to major in chemistry.
During my first two years at Yale, I envisioned a career in scientific research but wondered whether I should aim for a Ph.D. or an M.D. In the early afternoon of November 22, 1963, I was fetching some glassware for my Chem 29 (organic) lab when I heard a graduate student telling the stockroom manager that he would be pleased if Johnson were to become president should Kennedy die. I wondered what provoked such callous talk, but moments later I learned that President Kennedy had been shot. An hour later I heard the National Anthem coming from a radio in the next room containing offices for graduate students. The student owning the radio was continuing to study while the assassination of Kennedy was announced to the world. Having worked in the Kennedy White House in the summer of 1962, I was devastated by his murder. Beginning that day in Chem 29 I gained an impression that graduate students in science have less compassion (or are less communicative) compared to students planning a career in medicine. That impression caused me to decide to aim for medical school rather than graduate school.
During my senior year, I did research in the lab of Donald Crothers, a junior professor of chemistry who rapidly rose in prominence in the field of DNA structure and dynamics and who eventually became a Sterling Professor. I am very grateful to have worked with him and his graduate students, who did, in fact, have considerable compassion.
I ended up earning in 1973 both the M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at New York University School of Medicine. I did my thesis research on the mechanism of protein biosynthesis with biochemist Severo Ochoa, who had previously been the arch-competitor of Marshall Nirenberg in the deciphering of the genetic code. After an internship in medicine at Duke University, I moved to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to do a postdoctoral fellowship with - guess whom? -Marshall Nirenberg, who had changed his research interests to neurobiology. I am the only scientist who has worked with both Ochoa and Nirenberg. After my post-doctoral fellowship, I stayed at the NIH Intramural Program doing basic research, mostly independently, in the areas of gene regulation and the multiple genetic codes of mammalian genomes, until I retired in 2010.