Dr. Mary-Claire King

And I was in an experimental lab, a very fine experimental lab, but it was such a fine experimental lab.

And I think they honestly didn't realize how totally inept I was.

I've been a math major.

Some of both, I think.

I mean, I have now, of course, had many PhD students, and the vast majority of them have far better hands than I did.

But in the midst of all this, of course, we had the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the feminist movement, the National Guard on campus, which will resonate with a lot of people now.

And Ralph Nader hired me for a number of months to work on one of his very early projects was who owns the land of California and what are they doing with it.

So there were countervailing trends to do something else.

And Ralph and his staff offered me to come to Washington, D.C.,

to help form what became the Congress Project, and it was very tempting to go.

But I didn't.

I talked to Alan Wilson, who was at the time a political friend.

He wasn't yet my advisor, but he was mentor to many of us.

And he said something to me that I have said to many people since, and that is...

A couple of things.

First, if everybody whose experiments didn't work left science, there would be no one left.

So it's important to design a project that takes into account the fact that you can think of experiments well, but the techniques for you need to be relatively straightforward.

And that's honest and blunt and true.

And the other thing he said, which I think we all need to keep in mind, is that if you leave...

a mentee role, a trainee role, early, you will certainly do righteous projects, but you will never control the agenda.