I’m proud any time that I see a toxic chemical process, something that produces toxic waste or requires precious metals, which have to be mined at terrible environmental degradation costs — I’m proud when I see that replaced with a clean, efficient biological process that doesn’t produce those things. And we have to do that a million times over in order to move away from our addiction to this old-fashioned chemistry that we do.
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Frances Arnold
Chemical engineer; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 2018
United States · b. 1956
Science and medicine
About
Chemical engineer at the California Institute of Technology who developed directed evolution of enzymes. Awarded a share of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, having trained originally as a mechanical and aerospace engineer.
3 answers
I realized I took ideas from philosophers like Dan Dennett. I took ideas from evolutionary biologists like John Maynard Smith. I took ideas from people who were trying to implement evolution for things like RNA, so people like Jerry Joyce at Scripps. I took ideas from lots of people who could explain their ideas well, so I’ve been influenced by many. I’ve built my ideas on the contributions of many. And, of course, that’s what evolution does. It mutates and recombines what’s already there. Nothing comes out of nothing, right? It all comes on the back of what was there.
He says that he has the job of his dreams, which is the greatest joy that I can feel, is to have my child say he has the job of his dreams.
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