Nobel Laureate Scientist Rudolph A. Marcus
Veery: Do you find you have personalized your work process around your habits, schedule? Or do you veto your schedule, habits and just go full tilt, damn the calendar? Rudolph A. Marcus: When I get on to a particular problem that I'm working on, I will go full tilt until I either get an answer or figure that I better put it aside for a while. It's not sticking to regular hours necessarily, although I tend to work regular hours. But as far as working on a problem, when I'm working on something, I usually try to go full tilt.
Veery: What do you look for in a work of science? What does it have to have for you to be impressed by it? Rudolph A. Marcus: If I'm looking at some, say, set of experiments, it's certainly the definitiveness about it, that there shouldn't be too much vagueness in what the results mean, that there shouldn't be a hundred possibilities and with a lot of conjectures thrown in, that it provide a particular answer to a particular problem and that there aren't too many loose ends left hanging. Those are the kinds of results that I'd like to see, similarly with theories, and also the beauty, the beauty of a well-conceived experiment, or a clever idea of getting at something, the beauty of a theory that has all sorts of symmetry built into it. You know sometimes when you do something, you come out with some result that just feels right, that might have a kind of simplicity about it even though the intervening steps may be fairly complicated. Veery: When you talk about beauty and symmetry, do you find that you can apply those terms and thoughts to a work of art? Symmetry, does it apply in the same way in talking of a work of science as you would, of course in a different context, apply it in the same way to a work of art? Rudolph A. Marcus: Yes, I suppose some sort of balance; also, I use the word simplicity. You know you can have art that is not overly ornate, that has beautiful clean lines. Similarly in science, you can have reasoning or a result which has a kind of simplicity about it. Like, sometimes, say, I obtain some equation with many symbols in it, and it looks terribly messy, and then I usually try to play with it until I get something that looks more balanced. I think it's probably very much like creating a work of art or a cathedral.
Veery: What makes a scientist's career rise? Rudolph A. Marcus: Oh boy, many different things. If one does a piece of work that others recognize provides an answer to an important problem, and one may have a number of such pieces of work, then that certainly will make it rise. But there are many other things that don't necessarily have connection with the quality of the work per se directly, the school in fact, the number of people who are trying to advance an individual's career; many things can affect it. But certainly, if one can do a piece of work in an area that proves to be later on important and that work turns out to be very useful to the individuals in that field, that's probably the surest way to make it rise.
Veery: To what extent does the press play (specialty or general) in the previous question? Rudolph A. Marcus: I don't know that it plays very much. In other words, if a piece of work is really good, and useful, then the other scientists will normally recognize it, irrespective of what the press says. The press can of course have an influence about how some scientists might be regarded in the nonscientific community, but as far as individuals's careers, ultimately the test is "how does it sit with other scientists?" and "how useful is it?" Of course, sometimes the press gets called into some things which are unfortunate, like the cold fusion business.
Veery: In a specialty publication, done by scientists, read only by scientists, how can a great theory or discovery come out except by making its approval through a journal? Rudolph A. Marcus: It has to be in a journal. It has to be in a place where other scientists who might be interested in it can look at it, study it, think about it, and not just hear about it by word of mouth. When they feel and reflect on it, and try to test it, the statements have to be definite statements that one can look at and not just vague recollections of something one says; one has to in some cases be able to see the kind of reasoning that went into it and all of those things. When I was mentioning the press, I was thinking of the popular press. No, I wasn't thinking of journals at all. Journals are absolutely essential.
Veery: The editor of the specialty journal is controlling the rite of passage to get that great theory out there. Rudolph A. Marcus: But normally, it's really the reviewers, and usually the editor will go along with what the reviewers judge in the case of the reviewed journals, and I suppose most of them are reviewed journals. In some cases, the editor may send it to other reviewers if there's some dispute. In some cases the editor may have to make the final decision on his own but using the reviews. But normally, I don't think it's the editor who makes or breaks, but it's the whole reviewing process. Veery: The public is anxious for this cure or that cure and they want cures immediately - AIDS, for example - what do the nonscientists most misunderstand of the scientific process? Rudolph A. Marcus: You undoubtedly heard many times, and I think it's been adequately documented, that often some of the most far-reaching discoveries didn't come as the result of some targeted research program, but that they sort of discovered them through serendipity, like a chance occurrence - so the public may or may not realize that. The public may want some results too quickly when one doesn't understand enough about it. On the other hand, science does have obligations, whether it's in industry or health, and so sometimes some people have to work on problems where they don't fully have to understand things (and sort of working at a different level of empiricism) and try to get some results. And of course, it's also true that not all untargeted work ends up with spectacular results. In fact, very, very little does; but it's the small amount that does that has led to some great discoveries. So, I guess one needs both types.
Veery: Did you have any tough years of trying to make it all work, money, prestige? Rudolph A. Marcus: When I was young, we had very little money. There was a time when I was not sure I would be able to continue in college. But then the government opened some scholarships, and I accidentally heard about them from a friend and applied for one and got it. I think they weren't too difficult to get - they were new. And so there was that time.
Once I got my degree, I guess the times weren't too hard. After working on a couple of postdoctoral fellowships, I remember applying for an academic position - that was pretty tough. It was the uncertainty of what was going to happen. I applied to thirty-five places, and I've often said, "I didn't get thirty-five no's because not everyone replied." Then finally, through a series of fortunate circumstances, I managed to get a position, but there was that period of uncertainty when I was applying; that was probably the toughest period. After that, the salary I started off with was not high, but we didn't suffer.
Veery: Who are your favorite writers (novelists, poets, or dramatists) and why? Rudolph A. Marcus: A long time ago, I used to enjoy - I don't know if the word enjoy is right - authors like Dostoevsky. There were a number of novelists, but now I essentially don't seem to be reading novels, not for many, many years. Once my scientific career really took off, somehow almost everything seemed to be associated with finding out what the facts were. So for example, I spend far more time reading history, by a tremendous ratio, than say, reading novels. (Science, of course, has had a major impact on archaeology, using modern neutron activation techniques, learning about overpainting on canvases using x-rays, for example.)
Veery: Is there a difference between the scientist and the science? Veery: Do you think that when you read a scientific work, you can tell a lot about the scientist as a person? Rudolph A. Marcus: You know, I haven't thought about that. Certainly, some scientists, when they work on a problem, really settle some aspect of it, perhaps for all time, whereas some others don't do that, and there are all sorts of uncertainty. So there certainly is a difference in style of working. Now, whether you can look at a scientist in advance and know he's of this style, I haven't thought about that. I don't know. I'd be surprised if one could. Veery: In terms of the work that you encounter, if you see that someone is following such a thought process, can you imply anything about a person's characteristics? Rudolph A. Marcus: Well, you can tell if somebody's a tiger or not by how tenaciously they pursue a certain problem, and not satisfied with certain results and go on and go on to obtain more definitive results. That characteristic I think you can find. I haven't thought about whether that characteristic extends . . . well, now that I think of one individual, yes, I think that it extends to his other behavior.
