Sidney Altman Quotes
Sidney Altman Quotes
- 1
About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power.
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- 2
At the MRC laboratory I started the work that led to the discovery of RNase P and the enzymatic properties of the RNA subunit of that enzyme.
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- 3
By the time I reached high school my father's grocery store had made our life adequately comfortable and I was able to choose, without any practical encumbrances, the subjects that I wanted to pursue in college.
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- 4
Eight months later, having left Columbia, I was studying physics in a summer program and working in Colorado when I decided to enroll as a graduate student in biophysics.
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- 5
For our immediate family and relatives, Canada was a land of opportunity.
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- 6
Furthermore, neither of our research groups set out in search of RNA catalysis.
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- 7
However, it was made clear to the first generation of Canadian-born children that the path to opportunity was through education.
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- 8
I should mention that while I was growing up, Einstein was presented as a worthy role model for a young boy who was good at his studies.
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- 9
I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics.
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- 10
I was born in Montreal in 1939, the second son of poor immigrants.
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- 11
Indeed, we are privileged to have been afforded the opportunity to study Nature and to follow our own thoughts and inspirations in a time of relative tranquillity and in a land with a generous and forward-looking government.
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- 12
It was from them that I learned that hard work in stable surroundings could yield rewards, even if only in infinitesimally small increments.
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- 13
My intention was to enroll at McGill University but an unexpected series of events led me to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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- 14
Nevertheless, as is a frequent occurrence in science, a general hypothesis was constructed from a few specific instances of a phenomenon.
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- 15
No sacrifice was too great to forward our education and, fortunately, books and the tradition of study were not unknown in our family.
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- 16
The chemical details of catalysis by RNase P remain to be fully worked out although a rough picture of this reaction is now available.
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- 17
The mystique associated with the bomb, the role that scientists played in it, and its general importance could not fail to impress even a six-year old.
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- 18
The RNA World referred to an hypothetical stage in the origin of life on Earth.
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- 19
Thus, the pathways leading to the discoveries of RNA catalysis were not as direct as one might imagine from reading about the results in textbooks.
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- 20
We are united in the hope that every individual will someday enjoy at least the intellectual privileges we have had, if not always the material advantages.
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- 21
We are very fortunate to be recognized here in such an extraordinary manner for work that we enjoy.
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- 22
We soon suggested that the RNA subunit of RNase P was part of the active center of the enzyme, by analogy to the then current picture of the ribosome.
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