Word: bloch
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...Bloch is a slender, quiet man who speaks haltingly, sometimes eloquently, with a trace of a German accent. He came to this country in 1936 after a two-year stint in a Swiss bacteriology lab, having fled his native Germany in 1934. He became an American citizen in 1944 and came to Harvard ten years later as Higgins Professor of Biochemistry, after teaching at Columbia and Chicago. Bloch's interests are almost completely confined to his research. Unlike many Harvard scientists he serves on no government policy committees and did not participate in last month's presidential campaign...
...difficult to say what has made Bloch so successful in one of the most baffling fields of modern inquiry. According to him, the element of chance has played an enormous role in his work. "Biochemistry is still a fairly new subject, and so progress is often a matter of intuition rather than logical deduction." He does admit however, that important notions occur most frequently to the prepared mind. "Success in science is an awareness of relationships. Every once in a while you recognize that two facts you have known all along are not isolated by have some logical connection...
Though gratified by the Nobel Committee's recognition of his work. Bloch feels that awards of any sort are irrelevant to science. "I have my doubts that awards serve any function at all--and I have been saying this for many years." By neglecting deserving workers, Bloch says, "Awards create as much unhappiness as happiness, and this is just unnecessary. Certainly the quality of research being done today is no better for the existence of awards...
...awards are no incentive to the scientist, is human welfare? "No," says Bloch. "If a challenging intellectual problem bears on one of the main social problems confronting mankind, the researcher is pleased." But, he says, the consequences of research are seldom a powerful element in the motivation of the scientist. "In my case, the motivation was simple curiosity. I was puzzled by a chemical structure--before it was even thought to be detrimental to health--in the same way that a jig-saw puzzle is intriguing, and I wondered how it all came about...
...Bloch volunteered that Jacques Barzun's criticism of scientists for irresponsibility does not trouble him. "Science is a glorious entertainment in the best sense--all scientists are doing is amusing themselves, but in non-frivolous way," Bloch said. "This may sound irresponsible, but at least it's honest...