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It's one of the world's most exclusive clubs Peter Doherty joined in 1996, sharing the Nobel Prize in medicine. Few make it, which is why the title of his memoir, The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize raised a few eyebrows.
So how do you win the Noble Prize?
You get lucky, yeah, well you work hard for a long time, you, you look very hard of what's coming up in front of you, the data that you see, and you are instructed by what you see there. And, and you need a bit of luck, too.
The Australian scientist never thought he was on a path to the highest honor in science. Doherty first trained as a veterinarian, but found his calling in the mysterious field of infectious diseases.
My nominee is Zinkernagel .
He teamed up with another young professor Rolf Zinkernagel. and made in an world-winning discovery almost by accident.
We were doing some experiments to look at a particular question and then, then we suddenly got this very unexpected result, realized that it was probably extremely significant straightaway.
The pair had cracked the code of T cells which Doherty calls the " hit man " of the immune system. How they fight infected cells and leave healthy ones alone?
Firstly, It was so, so unorthodox, and so against the accepted wisdom that people didn't really even grasp what we are saying .
Experiments by others confirmed the findings and expanded on them, leading to new vaccines and advances in the fight against cancer. Nobel came calling 2 decades later and it changed Doherty's life. There were endless accolades, even having his face on a postage stamp.
Well, you get a fair amount of money when you win it, you get invited to very nice meetings and very nice places, but you quickly find that you can't handle all that and you tend to go on need to the things, when you think you 're gonna all learn something new, or you gonna be doing something useful.
Most of the professor's time is devoted to his research labs, one in Australia and one in the US. Doherty credits his success to curiosity and a willingness to question, something he tries to impress upon his proteges and anyone asking for his advice.
From us if we are not gonna win the Nobel Prize, but, but people can be winners I think, to have a satisfactory life, you wanna look within yourself, and trying find out, well, what is it that I can contribute.
And sometimes that contribution can end up being much bigger than expected.
James McDonald, CNN, Melbourne , Australia.
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