In case you missed it... I had the opportunity to speak with a few Nobel laureates during my time in Lindau, and I asked each of them the same question: “what is the best advice you have ever received?” Part 1 of this topic showed what Walter Kohn had to say. In part 2 I wanted to mention what Martin Chalfie had to say (he got the Prize last year for his use of green fluorescent protein (GFP) in nematode research).

Chalfie’s response was: “Do something different for your Post-Doc”

Now... I don’t have a picture of me and Chalfie (like I do with Kohn), but here is a related picture, and perhaps one of my favorite pictures of a Laureate taken on this trip.



In this picture you can see Chalfie (on the left, with his back turned to the camera), Shimomura (on the right, with his back turned to the camera) and Tsien with a student and a media representative (in the middle). I like this picture so much because the media representative handed Tsien this dog, and he is clearly thinking “what am I supposed to do with this?” He looked over the dog for a solid minute.

Here’s a better picture of all three 2008 Nobel laureates in Chemistry: