scientist citizen an interview with bruce alberts科学家公民采访布鲁斯爱.pdfVIP

Interview Scientist Citizen: An Interview with Bruce Alberts Jane Gitschier* Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics and Institute for Human Genetics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America As the PLoS Genetics editorial board prepared for its first scientific meeting in San Francisco, its leaders proposed that I conduct an interview ‘‘live’’ as a feature of the proceedings, and I knew immediately whom I wanted to snare: Bruce Alberts, our own UCSF (University of California San Francisco) faculty member extraordi- naire, who had long been on my radar screen for an interview. Alberts (Image 1) is not only a remark- able scientist, he is also one of our country’s most passionate voices for sci- ence education. Indeed, his astonishing record of contributions to our understand- ing of DNA replication and molecular machines is now almost eclipsed by his public service. To consider what Alberts has already accomplished in his lifetime is humbling: one of the founding co-authors of the highly successful textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell, originator of the UCSF Science and Health Education Partnership with the San Francisco public schools, and president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for 12 years. Yet, at age 74 he is still going strong: I counted 56 committees on which he currently serves; he recently completed his tour of duty with the US Department of State as a science envoy to Pakistan and Indonesia; and he steers the journal Science as its editor-in- chief. Clearly, Bruce seems to have trouble saying ‘‘no’’, and, as head of the Bay Area Science Festival, which coincided with our board meeting, he also happened to be in town and worked us into his schedule. At the appointed hour, I