Two factors had the greatest influence on my decision. Back in my first year of medical school I lost my sister Elley an artist only two years my senior. Diagnosed with leukemia during my hematology clerkship as I learned about the dreaded disease, she lasted only two months. This horrifying event impressed upon me how fragile and precious life is, and how important it is to seize the moment and enjoy what you do while you can. I remember thinking when I look back upon my life at the age of seventy, thirty will seem young just go for it. And the second factor was Alice. She had complete faith in my ability to succeed. Never mind that postdoctoral studies meant a reduction of my already piddling house officer salary. She simply said you have no choice; we will manage somehow Memories of Chris Miller's laboratory beckoned so I returned for postdoctoral studies. Of course I will never out live his reminding me that I should have listened to him in the first place. Feeling far behind in my knowledge I approached my postdoctoral studies with intensity, learning techniques and theory I felt I should be an expert in electrochemistry, stochastic processes, linear systems theory, and many more subjects. I read books, solved the problem sets, mastered the subjects, and carried out experiments. I had the very good fortune of a coworker Jacques Neyton, a postdoctoral scientist from France. Jacques is a very critical thinker who would brood on a problem. We exchanged ideas often. When I would tell him one of my ideas he had a tendency just to listen quietly Then, after a while, if his response started with 'Hey roddy, there's something I dont understand'i knew I was in trouble-my idea was probably no good! After I completed a series of biophysical studies on K+ channels it came time to apply for an academic position During the late 1980s physiology departments were more interested in hiring channel gene cloners than bio physicists. But Peter Hess convinced his colleagues at Harvard that my work showed promise and I was offered an assistant professorship there. My laboratory made good progress on K+ channels. It was exciting for a while but in just a few years I began to feel that the return on what we could learn from studying the functional effects of mutations was diminishing. We had identified the K+ channel signature sequence, but without knowing its structure we never would understand the chemical principles of ion selectivity in K+ channels. I decided at that point to learn X-ray crystallography to someday see a K+ channelTwo factors had the greatest influence on my decision. Back in my first year of medical school I lost my sister Elley, an artist only two years my senior. Diagnosed with leukemia during my hematology clerkship as I learned about the dreaded disease, she lasted only two months. This horrifying event impressed upon me how fragile and precious life is, and how important it is to seize the moment and enjoy what you do while you can. I remember thinking when I look back upon my life at the age of seventy, thirty will seem young: just go for it. And the second factor was Alice. She had complete faith in my ability to succeed. Never mind that postdoctoral studies meant a reduction of my already piddling house officer salary. She simply said you have no choice; we will manage somehow. Memories of Chris Miller's laboratory beckoned so I returned for postdoctoral studies. Of course I will never out live his reminding me that I should have listened to him in the first place. Feeling far behind in my knowledge I approached my postdoctoral studies with intensity, learning techniques and theory. I felt I should be an expert in electrochemistry, stochastic processes, linear systems theory, and many more subjects. I read books, solved the problem sets, mastered the subjects, and carried out experiments. I had the very good fortune of a coworker Jacques Neyton, a postdoctoral scientist from France. Jacques is a very critical thinker who would brood on a problem. We exchanged ideas often. When I would tell him one of my ideas he had a tendency just to listen quietly. Then, after a while, if his response started with 'Hey Roddy, there's something I don't understand' I knew I was in trouble - my idea was probablyno good! After I completed a series of biophysical studies on K+ channels it came time to apply for an academic position. During the late 1980s physiology departments were more interested in hiring channel gene cloners than bio￾physicists. But Peter Hess convinced his colleagues at Harvard that my work showed promise and I was offered an assistant professorship there. My laboratory made good progress on K+ channels. It was exciting for a while but in just a few years I began to feel that the return on what we could learn from studying the functional effects of mutations was diminishing. We had identified the K+ channel signature sequence, but without knowing its structure we never would understand the chemical principles of ion selectivity in K+ channels. I decided at that point to learn X-ray crystallography to someday see a K+ channel