Although my years at Irvine were very productive, I missed not doing experiments myself because of the many responsibilities associated with a faculty position: teaching courses, supervising graduate students, meetings, etc. After spending seven years at Irvine as Assistant and then Associate Professor, I decided to move to a non-academic position. I joined the Molecular Physics and Chemistry Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1982. I had a smaller group – only a few postdoctoral fellows – but I also had the luxury of conducting experiments with my own hands, which I enjoyed very much.

I have now come down to a topic which is very distasteful; it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. 'Selling' to a scientist is an awkward thing to do. It's very ugly; you shouldn't have to do it. The world is supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out and welcome it. But the fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what you've done, read it, and come back and say, "Yes, that was good."

When another baby arrived, I realized that the problem could not be solved in the operating room, but that we had to combat the root causes of these atrocities. I decided to travel to the village of Kavumu to talk to the men: why don't you protect your babies, your daughters, your wives? And where are the authorities?

Now my job is to defend everybody. But I don’t mind. Because I travel, and I like to talk to people and really listen to them. And I have no prejudices. I figured out a long time ago that, whatever I think I know, I don’t know anything. Once I realized that, I really started learning. That’s a great strength: I know that I don’t know.

We still don’t understand the way a protein folds the way it does. I mean it’s an amazing thing.

I’m so pleased, because Caltech’s name is there as the pioneer of this whole technology…I’m proud of them.

He really was a major force in my life…So he was always supportive of my decisions vis-à-vis education. And very generous…He was in many ways.

It was also evident to me that if you really want to achieve and do well in American society, you have to work, and work hard…You have to work, you have to work.

But look at what we can do at a place like Caltech, with scientists from the Middle East to Europe to Asia to America.

One of them—I forgot the others— that I thought was really interesting is, Don’t take yourself too seriously. And I believe in that—I think I believe in that.