James Watson - AVOID BORING PEOPLE - Lessons from a Life in Science

This ploy, however, didn't work. David, Torsten, and Ed eventually decided to remain at Harvard Medical School. The Pappenheimer microbiology tenure slot was also up for grabs, since Boris Magasanik had turned it down more than a year before to remain a member of the MIT biology department, whose future he saw no reason to question. Now the department was prepared to change tracks and offer the position to Renato Dulbecco, whose research on DNA tumor viruses was zooming forward. No one, however, was surprised when Renato declined it, knowing his research facilities in the soon-to-be-completed Salk Institute would be incomparably better than Harvard could offer in the Biolabs.

Wanting to pull off at least one coup of tenure acceptance, Keith

Porter enthused about recruiting the circadian rhythm expert Woody Hastings, from Illinois. Long a fixture of the Woods Hole summer scene, Woody was liked by all, and I went along in voting for his appointment though I saw his science as having little potential to make lasting ripples. As I was soon to leave the Biology Department to take on BMB stripes, I saw only ill will coming of opposing Woody on intellectual grounds. If the appointment was to be blocked, the move would have to occur at the ad hoc committee level. But the committee was composed of academics who thought biology teaching had to remain diverse, and the appointment went through.

At the January n, 1966, meeting when the Biology Department recommended the Hastings appointment, it also made Wally Gilbert a member, opening the way for him to obtain space of his own that I assumed would be adjacent to mine. There was also much discussion about John Edsall's memorandum to Franklin Ford urging the speedy creation of a Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Keith said he would form a three-person committee to draft a statement that everyone anticipated would express the Biology Department's support for the split. A similar discussion occurred in the Chemistry Department, which likewise accepted the split, though it expressed regret they would lose from their ranks important figures such as Paul Doty. Believing the matter to be sufficiently important for outside analysis, Franklin Ford took John Edsall's specific proposals before a specially convened ad hoc committee that requested more precise details before ruling in favor of a subsequent revised proposal. Officially the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology would come into existence on February 1, 1967, with its offices on Divinity Avenue in the large wooden house where the famed historian Arthur Schlesinger had been raised.

The impending creation of the BMB, however, did not put my mind at rest. While spending the spring in Alfred Tissières's lab in Geneva, I got wind that the biology faculty was proposing to move the geneticist Paul Levine onto the third floor, adjacent to my lab. Giving Paul this space would not only prevent Wally Gilbert from getting it but also limit the possibility of locating junior faculty members near Wally and me. As Dulbecco had just declined our offer, I wrote to Keith saying

that if new blood was to enter the Biolabs, it would have to come through the junior ranks.

In my office in 1967

The thought of their making Paul my neighbor, and effectively forcing Wally to move to the fourth floor, made my blood boil, and I told Porter so. Ever since Wally had gained tenure, our students had two mentors simultaneously—a unique research experience. Spirited conversations over coffee, lunch, and tea would occur much less frequently with our two groups on two different floors. Over the summer, talk of Levine's relocation stopped, leading me to hope that I had made enough of a stink to scotch it. But the plan was resurrected in September with Geoffrey Pollitt, the Biolabs’ senior administrator, arguing that it would free up ten units of precious lab space. In my mind the same objective could be achieved by reducing Levine's domain, which now equaled mine in square footage, though with only half the personnel. Not until mid-December did Keith officially

backtrack, offering Wally the same office and research space that in May he had proposed giving to Paul Levine.

Our new department was coming into existence not a moment too soon.

Remembered Lessons

1. Success should command a premium

Whether my Biology Department enemies helped orchestrate Harvard's failure to acknowledge my Nobel Prize with a respectful salary increase, I will never know. I had added visibly to Harvard's image capital in a way that by my lights merited more than the president's pro forma one-sentence congratulatory letter. Much bunk is peddled about money not being a prime motive of the academic. This does not, however, change the fact that salary is the means by which any employer expresses how much he values you; whether you need the cash or not, make sure your salary reflects your status.

2. Channel rage through intermediaries

Feelings of intense anger against university administrators are best conveyed through friends who share your feelings of mistreatment. Directly confronting your dean all too easily leads to words that burn bridges within your institution. It never makes sense to be seen as a hothead unable to see another person's point of view.

3. Be prepared to resign over inadequate space

Your colleagues won't know whether your raise is a thousand dollars more or less than theirs, but everyone can see what sort of work space you are assigned. It affects what you can accomplish and how you are perceived. Assigning equal space to all equally ranked academics sounds fair but leads to inefficiencies. Individuals at different stages of their career have different needs but giving or taking away space accordingly leads to complaints of favoritism, and so political rather than rational allocation is the norm. Yet if you find yourself denied the space you need to exploit a bright new idea or experimental breakthrough, you may be overtaken by competition elsewhere. Losing an important space request means either your talents are not recognized or your department is relatively indifferent to whether you stay or go. If you don't make a credible threat to resign, you will never know where you stand. Such moments are inherently stressful and never to be taken lightly. But in the Darwinian world of an academic department, if you don't create such crises, limited resources will surely go to gutsier colleagues.

4. Have friends close to those who rule

When Charlie Wyzanski learned over a Society of Fellows dinner that I had been summarily called back to Harvard while on a visit to California, he wrote to his friend at the Harvard Corporation, Thomas Lamont. In a private letter, Charlie expressed how asinine Harvard would have looked if the matter had leaked to Boston newspapers. And a word to the wise was sufficient.

5. Never offer tenure to practitioners of dying disciplines

In the 1960s, the Harvard Biology Department continued to make tenured appointments in fields such as development and plant biology, tired games not likely to rebound soon. Undergraduate teaching needs were invariably cited for such appointments. MIT, on the other hand, practiced attrition with these dying disciplines, leaving the teaching of them to untenured faculty. Consequently, by the mid-1970s, our academic rival began moving from behind to far ahead of Harvard in biology, with predictable effects on the quality of graduate students in both places.

6. Become the chairman

Most top university scientists disdain duties that take time from research. They see administration as a bore, and everyone wants someone else to be the department chairman. As a result of shirking responsibility, most science departments are less exciting places than they should be. The straw that stirs the drink counts for a lot. Dull chairmen make foolish choices when they assign the teaching of important courses and the use of precious department space and facilities. The wrong faculty members handle departmental seminars and keep the library buying journals that no one reads. Departmental meetings have no purpose droning on without addressing vital issues until there is no oxygen left in the room. Being chairman need not consume more than 10 percent of an intelligent professor's time, possibly less than he or she might waste griping about bad decisions made by others.

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