Bruce Alberts: Education, education, education

B ruce Alberts needs no introduction to our readers, each one of whom is sure to have a thoroughly dog-eared copy of " Molecular Biology of the Cell " (1). Alberts, a co-author of this bible of biology, has not only been shaping the scientifi c landscape through his research (2, 3), but also infl uencing the way science is done (4), and the way science is taught (5, 6). Not bad for a man who failed his PhD exam on the fi rst attempt. Alberts was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1987, and served as its President from 1993 to 2005. He is a member of the American Society for Cell Biology and served as its President in 2007. Since 2000, he has been the Co-Chair of the InterAcademy Council (the association of Science Academies from around the world). And this March he was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine. On top of all this, he still manages to hold down a day job: he is a Professor in the Despite having a schedule busier than an international airport, Alberts made time to talk with us and share his dreams for a scientifi cally empowered global populace. How did you get started in science? My fi rst introduction to science was in high school. I took chemistry and became very attached to the teacher; his name was Carl Clader. I was entranced by chemistry , but I didn't know you could make a career out of it. I didn't know anybody who was a scientist. No scientists in your family? No. I didn't meet a scientist until I got to Harvard, where I took premedical classes with the intention of going to medical school. How did you go from pre-med to becoming a scientist? I remained a pre-med student until my junior year at Harvard, when, by chance, I got into a research laboratory. Until then, laboratory classes had seemed like cookery classes. They were for three hours an afternoon , three days a week. I didn't enjoy them. When I took a terrible physical chemistry laboratory in my junior year, I fi nally got enough courage to say, " I want to drop this lab. What can I do to get out of it? " I discovered that it was possible to do independent research—an option that had not been advertised. So, after taking two …