Sidney Altman
I was born in Montreal in 1939, the second son of poor immigrants.
I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics.
I should mention that while I was growing up, Einstein was presented as a worthy role model for a young boy who was good at his studies.
I am conscious of two events that sparked my early interest in science, the first being the appearance of the A-bomb.
However, it was made clear to the first generation of Canadian-born children that the path to opportunity was through education.
Furthermore, neither of our research groups set out in search of RNA catalysis.
For our immediate family and relatives, Canada was a land of opportunity.
Evolution has presented us with contemporary versions of this enzyme that undoubtedly will someday tell us an interesting story of its progression from an RNA to various complexes of RNA and protein.
Eight months later, having left Columbia, I was studying physics in a summer program and working in Colorado when I decided to enroll as a graduate student in biophysics.
Cech's observation and ours, while still greeted skeptically by some members of the enzymological community, were soon universally accepted and within a few years other catalytic RNAs derived from plant pathogens and the human delta RNA were also found.
By the time I reached high school my father's grocery store had made our life adequately comfortable and I was able to choose, without any practical encumbrances, the subjects that I wanted to pursue in college.
At the MRC laboratory I started the work that led to the discovery of RNase P and the enzymatic properties of the RNA subunit of that enzyme.
After working on the effects of acridines on the replication of bacteriophage T4 DNA, I joined Mathew Meselson's laboratory at Harvard University to study a DNA endonuclease involved in the replication and recombination of T4 DNA.
About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power.