Peter Agre
12 quotes
Biography
"Written in 1895, Alfred Nobel's will endowed prizes for scientific research in chemistry, physics, and medicine. At that time, these fields were narrowly defined, and researchers were often classically trained in only one discipline. In the late 19th century, knowledge of science was not a requisite for success in other walks of life."
"The need for general scientific understanding by the public has never been larger, and the penalty for scientific illiteracy never harsher… Lack of scientific fundamentals causes people to make foolish decisions about issues such as the toxicity of chemicals, the efficacy of medicines, the changes in the global climate."
"Our single greatest defense against scientific ignorance is education, and early in the life of every scientist, the child's first interest was sparked by a teacher."
"We always had lutefisk for Christmas dinner, after which Dad read from the Norwegian Bible."
"Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota, then Oxford College in Minnesota, and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee, where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling, who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry."
"The long, cold Minnesota winters instilled in me a fascination for exotic far off places I aspired toward a career in tropical diseases and world health problems."
"Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s, so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this."
"My brother Jim and I spent many wonderful summers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin owned by Mom's cousins, and as members of our local Boy Scout troop."
"Following my junior year in high school, I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber, a young language teacher from Roosevelt."
"We always had lutefisk for Christmas dinner, after which Dad read from the Norwegian Bible."
"Johns Hopkins introduced me to two defining events in my life: commitment to biomedical research and meeting my future wife, Mary."
"While the lab plays an enormous role, research is also influenced by inner peace of mind and one's family environment, depending on what stage of one's life and career a scientist is at."