 "Photo: Robert Youngblood")
Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist James Watson encouraged students to seize opportunities and avoid living passively during his lecture Monday.
"If you want to be a big shot, sit next to them," Watson said. "But, if you think you're going to be bored, sit in the back. If it's boring, walk out. Don't waste your time."
Watson's lecture was part of the Gottlieb Lecture Series, a program honoring the late Paul Gottlieb, former director of the School of Biological Sciences.
Watson and his partner Francis Crick, in collaboration with Maurice Wilkins, discovered the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. They received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1962.
Nearly 1,000 people came to the Texas Union Ballroom to hear Watson speak about his book and his life, which at one point almost brought him to Austin.
"After graduating from the University of Indiana in 1950, I almost got a job in Austin, but I went to Cambridge instead, where I met Crick," Watson said.
Despite his many accomplishments in the molecular biology field, Watson instead discussed his new book, "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science."
Watson gave his quirky, blunt rules for getting through life. He said students should take hard courses and avoid ones that waste their time.
"Graduate education is far too long," Watson said. "Six to seven years in a graduate school is serfdom."
Kate Johnson, a cell and molecular biology graduate student, is a member of the Gottlieb Lecture Series committee that coordinated Watson's appearance at UT. The committee had lunch with Watson and spent time with him before his lecture.
"This was a tremendous opportunity being on this committee," Johnson said. "It was amazing to be in such a personal and intimate setting with the single most important man in our field."
During his speech, the accomplished Watson joked about the possibilities for his book.
"This new book, I'm hoping it will get me on the Jay Leno Show," Watson said. "If there is to be a movie made, I want a tall, thin actor for my candidate: Sacha Baron Cohen is in mind. Only, he'd be seeking out not Pam Anderson, but the meaning of life. If I can pull that off, at last I can be rich."
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