Ask the Right Questions at the Right Time

Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology, 1970

Julius Axelrod, who pioneered in the chemistry of the nervous system and the effects of various drugs on the human nervous system, spent his career as a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Axelrod was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discoveries of the mechanisms for nerve message transmission.

"Don't be so sure that you have to achieve terrific grades in school to be accomplished in science, " says Dr. Julius Axelrod.

"At age 14, I really wanted to go to Stuyvesant, the high school for bright students, but my grades weren't good enough. My real education was obtained from the Hamilton Fish Park Library, a block from my home. I was a voracious reader and read through several books a week-from Upton Sinclair, H.L. Mencken, and Tolstoy to pulp novels such as the Frank Merriwill and Nick Carter series."

Dr. Axelrod says that luck and good timing helped him start off his career in science. "I studied biology and chemistry in college, but I graduated in the midst of the Depression, when jobs were scarce. So I took the government's postal exam, and almost joined the Post Office at a clerk's job paying $40 a week, a lot of money in those days. Then I heard about a lab assistant's job at the NYU medical school paying $25 a week. It was just pure luck that I decided to take the laboratory position. Later, I got into research which I took to immediately. I did it well and I loved it."

Dr. Axelrod eventually found himself at the National Heart Institute, at the National Institutes of Health. His first research project there was to examine the physical effects of caffeine on humans. That led to later research at NIMH on how various drugs are metabolized by the body and how nerves transmit signals.

"Many clinical problems, including AIDS, diabetes, mental and cardiovascular disease, will be better understood by knowing how cells can send and interpret signals," says Dr. Axelrod. He also says that although science is hard work, it is "fun to do and very well might help other people," which he believes is reason enough to do it.

He recommends that young people study those subjects that feel right and important to them, otherwise their motivation to continue may not really be there. "Try to ask the right questions at the right time," he says. "And develop the know-how to answer them."

"There is nothing as exhilarating as an experiment that turns out the way you hoped it would."

Adapted from Curiosity is the Key to Discovery: The Story of How Nobel Laureates Entered the World of Science, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1992

Back to Curiosity is Key page

 
Some links may be under construction