Summary

From Nobel Prize-winning scientist James D. Watson, a living legend for his work unlocking the structure of DNA, comes this candid and entertaining memoir, filled with practical advice for those starting out their academic careers. InAvoid Boring People, Watson lays down a lifers"s wisdom for getting ahead in a competitive world. Witty and uncompromisingly honest, he shares his thoughts on how young scientists should choose the projects that will shape their careers, the supreme importance of collegiality, and dealing with competitors within the same institution. Itrs"s an irreverent romp through Watsonrs"s colorful career and an indispensable guide to anyone interested in nurturing the life of the mind.

Author Biography

James D. Watson was director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York from 1968 to 1993 and is now its chancellor emeritus. He was the first director of the National Center for Human Genome Research of the National Institutes of Health from 1989 to 1992. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, he has received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society and is a Knight of the British Empire (KBE). He has also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.

Foreword	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Manners Acquired as a Child	p. 3
Manners Learned While an Undergraduate	p. 21
Manners Picked up in Graduate School	p. 38
Manners Followed by the Phage Group	p. 55
Manners Passed on to an Aspiring Young Scientist	p. 72
Manners Needed for Important Science	p. 94
Manners Practiced as an Untenured Professor	p. 118
Manners Deployed for Academic Zing	p. 136
Manners Noticed as a Dispensable White House Adviser	p. 155
Manners Appropriate for a Nobel Prize	p. 173
Manners Demanded by Academic Ineptitude	p. 195
Manners Behind Readable Books	p. 213
Manners Required for Academic Civility	p. 240
Manners For Holding Down Two Jobs	p. 259
Manners Maintained When Reluctantly Leaving Harvard	p. 286
Epilogue	p. 316
Cast of Characters	p. 329
Remembered Lessons	p. 343
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Excerpts

Remembered Lessons from Childhood on Chicago's South Side

1. Avoid fighting bigger boys or dogs

As a child I lived with being punier than other boys in class. The only consolation was my parents' empathy—they encouraged constant trips to the local drugstore for chocolate milk shakes to fatten me up. The shakes made me happy, but still all through grammar school other kids shoved me around. At first I responded with my fists, but soon I realized that being called a sissy was a better fate than being beaten up. It was easier to cross to the other side of the street than come face-to-face with loitering menaces with a nose for my fear. Likewise, I was no match for barking dogs, particularly ones I had provoked by climbing over fences into their domains. Spotting a rare bird is never worth the bite of a cur. Once bitten by a German shepherd, I knew that I preferred cats, even if they are bird-killers. Life is long enough for more than one chance at a rare bird.

2. Put lots of spin on balls

I long wanted to be part of the softball games played on the big vacant lot across Seventy-ninth Street. At first my only way to join in was to field foul balls. Then I learned how to put spin on underhanded pitches that kept even the better batters from routinely smacking line drives through holes in the outfield. From then on I felt much less an outsider on Saturday mornings. The spins that came from similarly slicing ping-pong serves helped make me a good player well before my arms got long enough to reach near the net of our family’s basement table.

3. Never accept dares that put your life at risk

Seeing classmates dash across a street to beat a coming car filled me with more horror than envy of their bravado. When I rode my bike three miles to the Museum of Science and Industry, I knew my constantly worrying mother would have preferred my taking the streetcar. But by being cautious—going down as many alleys as possible and never taking my hands off the handlebars when a car was passing—I was never really putting my life at significant risk. Likewise, in climbing up and over the branches of neighborhood trees or hoisting myself up along gutters to the roofs of one-story garages, I may have been risking a broken leg but not a fatal fall. The possibility of plunging more than ten feet never seemed worth the thrill of being high up.

4. Accept only advice that comes from experience as opposed to revelation

Listening to my elders just because they were older was not the way I grew up. Preadolescent exposure to my relatives’ views that the New Deal would bankrupt the United States and that Hitler would cease being an aggressor after conquering England left me with no illusions that adults are less likely than children to utter nonsense. For the most part, my parents tried to provide rational explanations for why I should think a certain way or do a certain thing. So I was convinced by my mother’s advice that I wear rubbers on rainy days so as not to ruin my leather soles. At the same time, I rejected her no less often heard argument that sodden feet led to colds.

By then I was conditioned to accept my father’s disdain for any explanations that went beyond the laws of reason and science. Astrology had to be bunk until someone could demonstrate in a verifiable way that the arrangement of the stars and planets affected the course of individual lives. Equally improbable to Dad was the idea of a supreme being, the widespread belief in whose existence was in no way subject to observation or experimentation. It is no coincidence that so many religious beliefs date back to times when no science could possibly have accounted satisfactorily for many of the natural phenomena inspiring scripture and myths.

5. Hypocrisy in search of social acceptance erodesyour self-respect

M

Excerpted from Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science by James D. Watson
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