Character evaluation of Richard Axel

In the early morning of October 4, 2004, a message was broadcast on the radio: "Two American scientists, Richard Axel of Columbia University and Linda Buck of the Hutchinson Cancer Center , won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine,” excitingly, Richard Axel won the Nobel Prize. Richard is the more relaxed mentor.

Richard has long been considered a genius. He was only 27 years old when he became a professor, and was elected as an academician of the American Academy of Sciences at the age of 37. In 1991, he and Linda Barker isolated the gene family of olfactory receptors. This discovery guides current research and understanding of smell.

None of the topics that can be overcome are attractive

Almost everyone who knows Richard can feel his superhuman intelligence. His penetrating eyes can make people feel uncomfortable, but his incredible understanding deeply attracts you. Anyone who meets him will be impressed by him. This is a passionate man who loves opera and literature; he likes and collects the works of many contemporary painters; but what attracts him most is science.

During the eight years of working with him, he worked from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, seven days a week, with very few breaks. He reads a lot of literature at work and spends a lot of time discussing issues with students and postdocs. In life, the laboratory is the most exciting and relaxing place for him.

Richard easily loses interest in known things. He is interested in problems that no one has ever touched before or that others think are too difficult to solve. What he often said is: "Those really attractive topics are impossible to conquer, and those that can be conquered are not attractive."

As early as the 1980s, another student at Columbia University Richard became interested in neurobiology under the influence of Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel. Analyzing brain functions at the genetic and molecular levels can provide a breakthrough in scientific explanation of human behavior. The key to this type of experiment is to determine which molecules in the brain are at work. Starting in the mid-1980s, he began to isolate genes encoding neurotransmitter receptors, hoping to gain insight into the flow of information in the brain. With unremitting efforts, his laboratory finally isolated 5HT (5-hydroxytryptamine) receptors and NMDA receptors. These two genes play key roles in controlling human emotions and human learning and memory respectively. In order to isolate the receptor gene, he invented the method of expression cloning. This method has been widely used for gene determination.

At the same time, he became interested in the mechanism of smell. With little understanding of the olfactory system, he intuitively thought this was a very interesting question. Humans can recognize tens of thousands of smells. These scents contain thousands of different chemical components. How these smells are perceived, how sensory information travels from the nose to the brain and ultimately causes our behavioral responses. In 1988, Linda Barker (then a postdoc in our lab) also became interested in smell issues. Using the latest molecular biology research results at the time, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Richard and Linda isolated the olfactory gene using the degenerate PCR method. This discovery and subsequent related work were eventually recognized by the Nobel Prize jury.

His scientific research was guided by interest

When the question of "how the sense of smell arises" attracted his attention, it was a complete mystery. Regarding this issue, there are many hypotheses in the academic community: some believe that each odor corresponds to one receptor; others believe that there are only a few receptors, and each receptor can accept stimulation from multiple odors. Richard believes that the fundamental solution to the problem lies in identifying the receptor gene. Experiments have shown that there are about 1,000 types of odor receptors in mammals. He and Linda later separately demonstrated that each neuron expresses a receptor gene, and each receptor neuron responds to only a few specific molecules. Each odor is made up of a mix of different molecules, and different odors stimulate specific, different combinations of receptor neurons. This group of stimulated neurons transmits signals to the brain, which are then analyzed and integrated by the brain, ultimately producing the sense of smell.

In his unremitting research on the mechanism of smell, Richard transformed from a molecular biologist to a neurobiologist.

His scientific research has always been guided by interests and has never been restricted by research fields. From molecular biology to cancer, from immunology to AIDS, until recently neurobiology and neurodevelopmental biology.

In the past five years, he is no longer satisfied with just understanding the ions and channels related to neuronal signal transduction, but has begun to focus on the most challenging topic in the field of neurobiology-neural password. The human brain has 100 billion neurons. Information is transmitted to the brain through sensory nerves, and after analysis and editing, it causes human behavior. How is this sensory information encoded and how is it decrypted? This critical question has fascinated generations of scientists. Richard decided to use fruit flies as an animal model to study the mechanism of the olfactory system to overcome this problem. This idea became possible with the arrival of another Tsinghua graduate, Wang Jing. Richard and others spent a lot of time together reading the literature, and then we discussed the model and designed the experiments. In the end, the efforts paid off—Wang Jing’s experiment was a great success, and Richard’s model gradually gained widespread recognition in the field.

Eccentric Genius

Richard was famous for his eccentricity. He was tall and thin, and walked through the corridors every day shouting at people, "Data, are there any data?" Sometimes he would stare at you and ask, "Don't you have anything interesting to tell me?" If your answer aroused If you pay attention, he will sit down and analyze the problem logically with you, and often discuss the subsequent experimental design. When we are busy doing experiments or organizing data, we will also say to him directly: "Go aside, Richard, I am very busy." He will walk away, but before leaving, he will tell you a joke. .

Although he can behave like a complete gentleman, in the laboratory, a place where he feels unrestrained, he never pays attention to social etiquette. He never misses an opportunity to ridicule, ridicule, and belittle others. He would often get lost in thought while talking to others and then walk away unapologetically. He would respond to some questions by saying, "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard."

Richard was like a naughty child at times. He often loses his temper and yells at others when he is in a bad mood. He also teases others. What he likes most is making up "data" while chatting and saying it as if it's true. When others were stunned by this "new discovery", he would grin from the sidelines and enjoy the fun brought by his little prank. Those of us who knew him well could quickly figure out that the "data" was fabricated, so we helped him "deceive", pretending to discuss "important findings" while appreciating the unsuspecting Funny reactions from victims.

It is this childishness that keeps him as curious as a child and does not trust authority and existing results. He created an atmosphere in the laboratory that fostered broad vision, creativity and originality. This atmosphere encourages everyone in the laboratory to take the initiative to think about novel problems and find novel solutions.

"Rock-solid" scientific research

Richard is also notoriously demanding. There are two atmospheres in his laboratory: one is to constantly pursue new discoveries and raise new questions; the other, and extremely important, is to dare to criticize any idea mercilessly.

He will look you in the eye and tell you without mercy that the results of the experiment are terrible. He will ask you to go back and redo the entire experiment under strictly controlled conditions. All experimental results must be carefully checked several times before they are finally published. While I was working in the laboratory, he always insisted on checking all the raw data. Sometimes he would check my experimental records or look at my results directly under the microscope.

Other scientists may publish more than a dozen articles a year, but Richard usually only publishes 1 to 2 articles a year. Due to the difficulty of the subject and the high requirements for experimental data, students or postdocs working in his laboratory spend an average of seven or eight years on a research project. The articles he published have stood the test of time, and many have become classics. He said: "I not only want to get the correct answers, I want to use experiments to prove the correctness of these answers beyond doubt." It is this rigorous academic attitude that some of Richard's colleagues describe his scientific research as " Solid as a rock”.

The future is yours

On October 6, 2004, Richard returned from California, and all the laboratory staff held a celebration banquet to celebrate his winning the Nobel Prize.

During the banquet, he elegantly toasted to everyone and said: "This honor does not belong to me, but to you. I am just accepting the award on your behalf." Thinking back to the excitement brought by the new discoveries made in the laboratory over the years In a heart-warming moment, he said: "I have already received my reward when I make a new discovery. The best thing in scientific research is to discover something that has not been discovered before."

He looked around The students sitting around the table continued, "The other thing is seeing your students succeed."

In fact, he has produced many successful students. Among his students and postdocs, more than 20 are teaching in leading universities and research institutes, 5 have become members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and 5 have been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, with whom Linda Barker shared the Nobel Prize.

In the past 13 years, Richard *** has recruited four students and postdocs from China, three of whom have become independent researchers. These three people are all from the Department of Biology of Tsinghua University, and Yu Rongrong and other three people have published very high-quality articles with him.

As Richard said many times: "The future of science belongs to you, young Chinese, go and fight for it.