“Get your sleep, your brain will thank you!”
– Oliver Smithies, Nobel Prize Laureate

This simple statement has been verified and given broad acceptance by the medical community for several generations.  It is brought to your attention because many years ago I was incredibly fortunate to have professor Smithies teach me to fly glider planes.

This simple statement has been verified and given broad acceptance by the medical community for several generations.  It is brought to your attention because many years ago I was incredibly fortunate to have professor Smithies teach me to fly glider planes.

During this process I quickly learned that “when we are coming down, we are coming down.”  Immediately thereafter I also learned that it was in my (and my eventual passengers) best interest to “do my best to do things right the first time.”  This successful and timeless process stayed with me when establishing our company objectives and building quantitatively driven investment portfolios.

Note: Professor Smithies shared one-third of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007.  He was also an avid single-engine pilot.  In 1980 he co-piloted the world speed records from Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada to Reykjavik, Iceland, and from Reykjavik to Prestwick, Scotland.

Oliver Smithies’s speech at the Nobel Banquet in the Stockholm City Hall, 10 December 2007.

The three of us (Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and myself) thank the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute and the Nobel Foundation for honoring us today.  And we thank our students and collaborators, whose help was indispensable in our research.  But we also acknowledge an older debt – to our teachers – which I want to illustrate with three of mine.

The first, Dr. G.E. Brown, taught mathematics at Heath Grammar school in Halifax, England.  “Oddy” Brown, as we called him, was a poor disciplinarian, and not much liked.  But he loved mathematics, and the calculus, and he conveyed this to at least one student – me!

This same lesson applies to scientists – the fear of failing – which many scientists have when trying something new – can be overcome – in the same way – with knowledge.

The third of my teachers is Dr. A. G. (“Sandy”) Ogston.  He was my tutor as an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford University, and later oversaw my change from medical school to graduate school in order to take up research.  Sandy was an extraordinary scientist, and a dedicated teacher.  And he conveyed to his students a view of science, which I quote in closing:

“For science is more than the search for truth, more than a challenging game, more than a profession.  It is a life that a diversity of people lead together, in the closest proximity, a school for social living.  We are members one of another.”