This professor was obviously on the jury, and I wanted to stay the faculty’s blessed son, and so I trusted external validation at this point in my life more than my own creative compass. So, like a lemming, I followed his advice. I spent the whole night undoing eight months’ work and recutting the film. And the next day, I presented this hacked up Frankenstein to the faculty, who absolutely demolished it.

So I really tried everything, including, you know, just how to build the team in such a way that I delegate everything, and I have my different business lines, and arrange things. This is sort of after the IPO, and I realized I have to be a very “serious” public company CEO. And so it almost killed the company, honestly.

But it was really – it came across sinister. And for me, I really did listen to it. I accepted it. I tried to implement that. The reason why I say it’s the worst advice I ever received was that it was damaging to me because she was totally wrong. ... And so, when somebody who is successful tells you to do something, you try to do it, even when it damages you.

I have also benefited from teaching; as I try to explain my views to students with critical and open minds, I find myself continually being challenged to go back and rethink ideas. I now see teaching and research as complementary, mutually reinforcing activities.

proud of recognizing that as a scientist, it was not only important to do research and find new things. I also felt a responsibility to apply them for the benefit of society.

As I was starting my academic career, it was almost considered to be a negative signal to your career to get involved in politics ... But to me that was a sign you were doing something useful.

Sherry offered me a list of research options: the one project that intrigued me the most consisted of finding out the environmental fate of certain very inert industrial chemicals – the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – which had been accumulating in the atmosphere and which at that time were thought to have no significant effects on the environment. This project offered me the opportunity to learn a new field – atmospheric chemistry – about which I knew very little; trying to solve a challenging problem appeared to be an excellent way to plunge into a new research area.

At first the research did not seem to be particularly interesting – I carried out a systematic search for processes that might destroy the CFCs in the lower atmosphere, but nothing appeared to affect them. We knew, however, that they would eventually drift to sufficiently high altitudes to be destroyed by solar radiation. The question was not only what destroys them, but more importantly, what the consequences are.

For me, it was just a thrill. I just remember thinking at that time, this is the sort of thing I would like to do, if I could. I did not come from a family of scientists. My father was a lawyer, my older brother was a lawyer.