The Transition from Student to Professor

TURNING points

Building confidence: the transition from student to professor

Elaine Fuchs My turning point as a scientist was the offer Marc Kirschner’s lectures on differentiation the 32P-labelling expert, Richard Hynes shared of an assistant professorship to join 15 male were counter to my maths professors’ views. my interest in comparing vimentin and keratin, colleagues in the Biochemistry Department at Bruce Alberts only took the best students — I Bryan Roberts at Brandeis was Zen master of the University of Chicago. How I arrived at this wasn’t among them. So I chose Charles Gilvarg, methyl mercury gels and the David Baltimore position is more circuitous. an exceptionally smart but demanding advisor and Phil Sharp labs were embarking on DNA Like many other kids who grew up in the corn- researching bacterial sporulation. recombinant technology. I thrived in the envi- field suburbs outside Chicago, playing in swamps Biological equations had too many vari- ronment at MIT. My experiments were working. and fields was far more interesting than organ- ables. I worked day and night without solving While maintaining my interests in music, art and ized sports, particularly when only three other any problems. I was, however, developing my travelling, I fuelled my passion for science. kids lived within earshot of our house. Unlike tennis backhand and broadening my horizons In my second year at MIT, Charlie Gilvarg those kids’ parents, my father was a geochem- with inexpensive trips to India, Nepal, Bolivia, nominated me for a faculty position at the ist and my aunt, a biologist at Argonne National Peru, Egypt and Turkey. Closer to Princeton, I University of Chicago. I was flabbergasted, but Labs. Both were graduates of the University of tasted the pleasures of New York City, discover- overjoyed. An even bigger surprise was the Chicago, where I later received an offer. ing restaurants, art and music. invitation for an interview: a free trip home and My father encouraged me to be an elementary Every now and then an experiment worked, a chance to practice being interviewed! school teacher; it was my mother — a homemaker yielding a fresh and exciting way to counter the Snow was everywhere. I always disliked with artistic, musical and gardening talents — agony of defeat. I began to enjoy designing my Chicago’s cold weather, but when the city is hit who contended that since I cooked well, I’d make own experiments. I defended my PhD with a by a major snowstorm, it is beautiful. My sem- a fine chemist. I didn’t believe her. However, I did modicum of confidence and with a determi- inar seemed to go smoothly. My discussions major in Chemistry at the University of Illinois. nation to work at the interface of biology and with famous scientists were a treat. The lack of As one of three women in a class of 200 physics medicine. I chose to work at Massachusetts expectations was a recipe for relaxation. students, I felt that I had to study hard to be rec- Institute of Technology (MIT) with Howard Months passed. Fellow MIT postdocs received ognized. I pestered the graduate teaching assist- Green, who devised methods to culture human rejection notices. I wondered if mine had been ants, who explained the science and also taught stem cells — epidermal keratinocytes — under lost in the mail. After receiving an offer that me how to juggle tennis balls. After each exam, conditions where they could be maintained and year, I wondered whether Chicago had been I always anticipated failure, but usually received propagated straight from tissue. impressed with my ‘confidence’ in not having the best grade and became a good juggler. On arrival, I was handed a bucket of rat applied elsewhere. On graduating, I hoped to enter the Peace submaxillary glands and asked to purify EGF My father always inspired me to strive to do Corps, an American programme for volun- (epidermal growth factor) for the lab. I was better. Charlie Gilvarg instilled in me the impor- teer work in the developing world. I applied to then asked to search through urine for new tance of designing a well-controlled experiment. graduate school as a default pathway, exerting growth factors. Perhaps Howard misinter- Marc Kirschner, Bruce Alberts and my other pro- my creativity by submitting a two page essay preted ‘P-Chem’ on my resume. Left to my fessors at Princeton inspired in me the excitement outlining my reasons for refusing to take the own devices, I began to identify keratins, their of the looming revolution in recombinant DNA graduate school entrance examinations. My mRNAs and their program of gene expression, technology. They exemplified why originality and options turned out to be graduate school or Idi as a means to explore epidermal differentiation. unconventional thinking are so critical in moving Amin, Uganda and the Peace Corps. I began embarking upon my own trajectory. science forward. Howard Green reinforced these Without having any college biology, I began I ventured upstairs, downstairs and across lessons. MIT generated an exhilarating environ- Princeton’s graduate programme in Biochemistry. the street. Sheldon Penman’s postdocs were the ment that stimulated every brain cell I had. It mRNA experts. Gobind Khorana’s postdocs made it easy for those with initiative to thrive. But Elaine Fuchs is the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor taught me to make Oligo dT cellulose. London’s the offer from the University of Chicago gave me of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, postdocs were skilled at isolating rabbit reticulo- the opportunity to have my own lab, affording me NY 10065, USA. E-mail: [email protected] cytes for in vitro translations. Jim Rothman was the possibility to pursue my passion.