Today the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. Richly deserved, their work has saved millions of lives and has created new pathways.
Each one had a key piece to the puzzle. Normally they wouldn't have crossed paths, but working copy machines were a limited resource on their campus. Katalin (her career path is amazing NY Times gifted) had the habit of reading very old papers and wanted to copy something when she ran into Drew who was also waiting for the machine.
They talked
I can't begin to list how many collaborations and information transfers have taken place when disciplines physically collide. Bell Labs was great at this in the day .. the Murray Hill cafeteria was a rich source as were the walking paths around the campus and the byzantine architecture of the place that randomly collided people with each other. All wonderfully inefficient by many standards. By design the main buildings at Pixar have a single large restroom that collides disciplines. Many research organizations have slate blackboards (important if you have mathematicians and/or physicists) or whiteboards everywhere - restrooms, walking paths, along the walls - for impromptu discussions. The disorganization of Building 20 at MIT is often cited as a founding example of this, but there are many earlier examples.
Creativity requires friction. People need a chance to bump into each other. I suspect this is true for many disciplines as creativity evaporates when people avoid each other for whatever reason. With all of the remote work these days it's important to think about, and make time, the create interesting connections. Arturo Casadevall at John Hopkins tells his people to read something or talk with someone outside their field every day.1
“And most people say, ‘Well, I don’t have time to read outside my field.’ I say, ‘No, you do have time, it’s far more important.’ Your world becomes a bigger world, and maybe there’s a moment in which you make connections.”
But back to today's prize and a comment on the Katalin. Her daughter Zsuzsanna Francia won gold in Rowing Eights in the 2008 and 2012 Olympic games. There are other notables. Harold Bohr was on the Danish Football team where he won silver in the 1908 Olympics. He was the mathematician bother of physics laureate Niels, who was solid amateur athlete. And Olivia Newton-John was the granddaughter of physics laureate Max Born.
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1 a tip of the hat to David Epstein
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