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The
Passion to Know
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Don't we need a lot of fish tanks?
The answer is yes. We have 4,592 of them.
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I
was lucky enough to belong to a generation of biologists who
figured out how life works at the molecular level. But you
are lucky enough to be able to belong to a generation of biologists
that will come to understand all human diseases at the molecular
level and to cure many of those diseases. You were lucky enough
to be born to a generation of biologists that will get control
over life. Even the design of life.
We are driven to do this research by the possibility that
it may have important medical applications. However, I personally
found that there was something even stronger that drives me
to get up in the morning and race to the lab and clean yet
another fish tank.
That
force is the passion to know and it's hard to explain. It
is the anticipation of that breath-catching moment when a
student rushes in to tell you that they know how that gene
works or when you learn that someone has taken another step
forward in understanding how a cell becomes cancerous. It's
very hard to explain that feeling. Like love, it is deeply
mysterious. And uniquely human.
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Recently,
Alan fed just a few of Hopkins' 150,000 fish.
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We
really cannot imagine what the world will be like as a result
of the discoveries that will be made in molecular biology
over the next 100 years. But there is one thing I do know
for certain. I know that you will have changed the world thanks
to the discoveries you will make because you- like me- are
able to indulge in this human passion to know. 
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Dr. Nancy
Hopkins is the Amgen, Inc. Professor of Biology at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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