This is a personal blog. Below are the posts in chronological order, not by order of importance/interest. For a collection of key posts, please click here. To see a brief bio and CV, click here.
Sydney Brenner, a pioneer of molecular biology 1950s-1970s, Cambridge LMB: “I strongly believe that the only way to encourage innovation is to give it to the young. The young have a great advantage in that they are ignorant. Because I think ignorance in science is very important. If you’re like me and you know too much you can’t try new things. I always work in fields of which I’m totally ignorant……Today [we] have developed a new culture in science based on the slavery of graduate students…….The most important thing today is for young people to take responsibility, to actually know how to formulate an idea and how to work on it. Not to buy into the so-called apprenticeship….I’ve never believed in these group meetings, which seems to be the bane of American life; the head of the lab trying to find out what’s going on in his lab.”
(see Dzeng interview reposted a jw-phillips.com (Sydney Brenner on how academia and publishing are destroying scientific innovation)
Garry Kasparov: “All we have to do is create opportunity for those who want to take risk. If we start funding this, there will be a long line of young people who are willing to participate, and will release a huge energy which has been so far suppressed.”
Kasparov in an interview with me in 2013, available here https://jw-phillips.com/2020/08/30/2013-coffee-with-kasparov/