It was a very simple thing. It was a church camp, I think. I was there about two or three days, very young, and I just remember some counselor telling us that reputation is what people think you are, and your character is what you are. So if you have a bad reputation, you might as well have a bad character, and it pays to have a good reputation and a good character.

Right, I went back as a mature student to art school, and I was advised to use my train journeys and commutes, or to just take time in the morning before work to sit down and write something. That was, I think, the beginnings of understanding what it meant to have a writing practice.

He asked me to go through the evidence of the cases, which I did. And at the end of it he said, “Well, you have one thing missing.” I said “What, I thought I covered all of the bases. I made the best arguments that I think the evidence would support.” And he looked at me, and he said, “That may all be true, but you’re missing passion. You related this crime and your evidence in a very impersonal way. How did you make the jury want to convict?” I said “Well, the judge charges them, tells them they have to convict if I prove my case.” And he said, “No, sentencing, not sentencing, finding someone guilty is a huge responsibility. You have to make people believe it’s what they have to do. And you have to make them believe that the evidence that you’ve presented gives them basically no choice.” And so I said, “How do you do that?” And he explained to me that it’s in the manner that you present your case. It’s in the manner that you show how passionately you believe in what you’re doing. And in how much you believe that you’ve actually proven your case and that they must return a verdict of guilty. And his words have led me to believe that that passion is what guarantees success in life.

Elliot, he has such passion for what it was we were doing that he instilled that passion in me. He was like, “Just go for it. Make it happen.” And I would give him some wild idea, and he’d say, “Go try it.” It was that next set of just knocking down the fear of failure. Just go try anything.

One in particular, Mrs. Gordon. I hated her. I took AP English. The AP courses were just starting in the ’50s. And you could take a maximum of two. I took Chemistry and AP English. Today, the kids come into Duke, they have ten, 12, 15 AP courses. They start taking AP courses in their first year of high school. It’s absolutely amazing. Mrs. Gordon taught AP English. And she took a disliking to me for some reason early on, and she didn’t like the way I wrote, so she gave me very bad grades on all my essays. She pounded into me about how to write clear, effective, succinct English. And I learned those lessons well. But what I remember — and I pay her a tremendous tribute for that because there’s no more important skill, certainly for a scientist, but really for almost any profession, than to be able to express yourself clearly and succinctly. And I think she really taught me that.

That’s easy, my trainees. In my field, receptor biology, the field is dominated by people that I trained. Kobilka is one example. I would say I have, for years — in all due modesty — I led the field. I passed that mantle to Kobilka. He has the newest technologies and this and that. But he’s just the limit case. There are dozens and dozens of people who trained with me that, if you go to any meeting on receptor biology and you look at the program, I don’t know, 30 to 40 percent of all the speakers will have either trained with me or trained with people who trained with me. They’re in the lineage. So that’s what I’m most proud of.