James Black shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing drugs, among them the beta blocker propranolol, which is used to treat hypertension, angina, and cardiac dysrhythmia.
Black studied medicine at St. Andrews University in his native Scotland. After several twists and turns in his early career, he joined ICI Pharmaceuticals, where he devised a new way to develop drugs. Rather than look for pharmacological effects in likely molecules, he would first investigate the biochemistry of a physiological process, such as a too-rapidly beating heart, and then design molecules that would prevent the process from running out of control.
In the autobiography that he wrote for the Nobel Foundation, Black recounted how he acquired his biochemical knowledge and skills:
My years at ICI, between 1958–1964, were some of the most exciting of my life. I was assigned a brilliant chemist, John Stephenson. He taught me about modern deductive organic chemistry; how to be more than merely curious about a molecule with an interesting biological effect: how to ask questions about it. He converted me to pharmacology. Indeed, my whole experience at ICI was an educational tour de force. I had to learn how to collaborate across disciplines, how to change gears when changing from research to development, how to make industry work—in short, how to be both effective and productive.
Black's fondness for interdisciplinary research came to mind this past weekend, which I spent at a symposium run by the Miller Institute of the University of California, Berkeley. The symposium took place at the Marconi Center in Tomales Bay, California, whose beauty I tried to capture in the cellphone picture below.
The symposium brought together Berkeley postdocs and professors who are funded by the Miller Institute and guest speakers. A sprinkling of science journalists also attended. The talks ranged in scale from molecular biology, through nanoscience and ecology, up to galactic astronomy. All the speakers took the trouble to make their talks accessible to a general scientific audience without shortchanging the science.
I can't be sure whether any interdisciplinary research will result from the weekend's talks and discussions, but more than one speaker responded to a question with an answer along the lines of, "That's an interesting question! hadn't thought of that." One of the participants told me over dinner that he wished his university had a similar program.
"Interdisciplinary centres are at the sharp end of proposed cuts"
When I conceived this blog post on my flight back from San Francisco, it was meant to be a simple paean to broadening one's scientific mind. That plan changed when I read a news story this morning on Nature's website.
My subtitle, which comes from the story's teaser paragraph, sums up the bad news. Faced with the reduced funds in the 2012 federal budget, NSF is contemplating cuts in the facilities it supports. As far as I can tell, NSF isn't deliberately targeting interdisciplinary research, but some of its largest and most expensive facilities, like the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, and Cornell's High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), tend to have a diverse set of users from several fields.
CHESS was one of the light sources that Ada Yonath used in the 1990s to determine the structure of the ribosome. She shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for that feat. It would be a shame if NSF's cuts to its interdisciplinary centers stifled groundbreaking research before it bears fruit.
