Albert Lasker
Basic Medical Research Award

I feel greatly privileged to be recognized by a Lasker Award, and I want to convey my thanks and appreciation to the Selection Jury and to the Lasker Foundation for this very great honor.

Standing here today and thinking about the journey that has brought me here, I also feel a certain poignancy, because my mother, who is no longer alive, would have been particularly proud, and would have loved to be here. I remember the delight with which she would often tell me of how, when I was six years old, the teacher of a little rural grade school in the West of England, which I had been attending while my family was visiting from Australia, had said to her of me: "She will go far."

This must have been gratifying indeed to hear for a parent who had had to live with my spine-chilling habit, in Australia, of picking up dangerous animals—poisonous jellyfish from the beach and stinging ants from twigs—and singing to them, behavior I thought perfectly natural because I loved animals. I was lucky to be given the circumstances that could transmute that childhood enthusiasm into a lifelong passion for doing science. I would wish everyone such good fortune.

I feel proud in turn of being part of a great tradition of biomedical research. I would like to see it stay strong and vibrant. To foster the best research and develop the best science policies, I want to say a couple of things that I believe we need to remember.

First, about research itself: It is important never to forget that science is as creative an endeavor as the humanities. Along with its more familiar aspects—like the necessary rigorous standards of proof—doing science is also letting the imagination be open to new ideas and lateral leaps that might at first seem outlandish. That means—as was true for our research that led to telomerase—having the freedom to do novel experiments at times, sometimes with obscure creatures. Joe Gall helped me appreciate this when I was a postdoctoral fellow with him. Because biology sometimes reveals its general principles through what may seem at first to be arcane and bizarre. All living things work fundamentally the same way when you get down to their molecules and cells; it is the extent and setting in which the various molecular processes are played out that differ from pond scum to humans, not their innermost workings.

The other thing I want to say is we certainly do not know where all our advances in understanding biology are headed: For a healthy science policy that serves society best, an environment of openness to available scientific evidence and freely shared and expounded ideas is crucial. We must surely keep alive a commitment to this. I feel very lucky to have been able to do science here in my adoptive country, the United States. But to realize the full promise of biological research we mustn't fear new biological science, as sometimes seems to happen.

A scientific heroine of mine, Marie Curie, the discoverer of radium, said it well: "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood." Thank you.