I have been very lucky to have won the Nobel Prize twice. It is, of course, very exciting to have such an important recognition of my work, but the real pleasure was in the work itself. One of the best things about scientific research is that you are always doing something different and it is never boring. There are good times when things go well and bad times when they don't. Some people get discouraged at the difficult times but when I have a failure my policy has always been not to worry but to start planning the next experiment, which is always fun.

      It is very exciting to make a new discovery. Some people will do the strangest things for this excitement, such as going round the world in a balloon or walking to the North Pole. There are not many new places to explore but there is a lot of new information to be discovered in science and a journey into this unknown area can be much more worthwhile, and just as exciting.

      I am sometimes asked, "What do I have to do to win a Nobel Prize?" My answer is "I don't know. I have never tried". But I know of one way not to win one. There are some people whose main reason for doing science is to win prizes, and they are always thinking about how to do it. Such people don't succeed. To do good science you must be interested in it and enjoy doing experiments and thinking out problems. And, of course, you must be prepared to work hard and not to be too discouraged by failures.

      In this country if you read some articles about science in the popular newspapers you might get the impression that science is more like the Olympic games or a game of football, with scientists all competing with one another to see who can make a discovery first and win prizes. This is not so. Scientists are working together as a team for the good of humanity and not just competing to see who is the cleverest. Any advances I have made have depended very much on earlier work by other people in other laboratories and on helpful discussions with, and advice from other scientists, and some of my work has contributed to other peoples' discoveries. Of course, there is a certain amount of rivalry but this is not helpful and is not often serious.

      I think my most important discovery was the "dideoxy" method for determining the sequence of nucleotides in DNA, which is now being used to read the sequence in the human genome. The human genome is probably the most important chemical substance since it contains all the information for the construction and functioning of our bodies. If one compares it to a book of instructions, it would have to be an enormous book, in fact more like a library, since it contains three billion letters. A book contains 26 different letters and the meaning and information is contained in the sequence of the letters. DNA has only 4 "letters" called A, G, C + T. (Of course these are not really letters but are chemical structures) and the information of the gene is contained in this sequence that is now being studied in many institutes in many countries. In fact, DNA is not just like a book of instructions which contains only information. DNA also does things as well, catalyzing many of the processes of life.

      There has been much speculation about what can be achieved from knowledge of the sequence of the genome. Some politicians and newspapers have prophesied that it will be possible to cure cancer or live to 130. These are idle speculations at present but I think it will probably be of value to medical science. If you had a machine, such as a motor car, and it went wrong, the first thing to do would be to look at the "instruction" book and find out how it works. Hitherto that has not been possible for medical science but we believe that if we have the sequence of the genome it will be possible to understand much better how the body works and what goes wrong when we have diseases. Indeed, scientists are already learning much more about hereditary diseases, but there is still a long way to go. If you have a book that is written in a language you don't understand, the first thing would be to look at the sequence of letters but there still would be a lot more work to be done before you could understand the language and what it is about. Similarly when we have the sequence of the genome there will still be a lot of work to do before it is fully understood how it works and what can be achieved with it. This will be an important exploration during this new century and should lead to new and exciting discoveries. It will be a good time to be a young scientist and to take part in this adventure.

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