Explorers

Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Carol Greider are pioneers in the study of telomeres, segments of DNA that help determine the number of times a cell divides, an event that affects the life span and health of cells, and the development of some cancers. Carol Greider was a graduate student of Dr. Blackburn's at the University of California, Berkeley in 1985, when she discovered the enzyme telomerase, which creates telomeres. This discovery has spawned a whole new field of research, with Dr. Blackburn and Dr. Greider in the forefront. Blackburn and her team at the University of California, San Francisco, have succeeded in more than doubling the life span of cells in the laboratory, research which may hold promise for controlling age-related and degenerative disorders. Greider's research at Johns Hopkins University focuses on the biochemistry of telomerase, and on the consequences of telomere dysfunction, including the role of telomeres in cancer. In awarding Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine, the awards committee noted that their discoveries "...have added a new dimension to our understanding of the cell, shed light on disease mechanisms, and stimulated the development of potential new therapies." In this address to the Academy of Achievement, recorded during the Academy's 2000 program in Scottsdale, Arizona, they share their research on Telomeres with the Academy's student delegates. They also discuss the roles of inspiration and intuition, the importance of good mentors, and the challenges of balancing the demands of family life with a career as a research scientists.

Hailed as the father of the biotechnology industry, the technologist and entrepreneur George Rathmann was the founding CEO of Amgen Inc. A chemist with a Ph.D. from Princeton, he worked for 21 years at 3M, where he helped develop Scotchgard, among other products. In 1980, he left a secure job as head of diagnostic research at Abbott Laboratories to become CEO of Amgen Inc., an underfunded start-up seeking to develop new drugs by splicing DNA from one organism into the genome of another. Rathmann led the company through a record-setting public offering, and introduced the revolutionary drug Epogen, now an essential component of therapy for kidney disease. George Rathmannn retired from Amgen in 1990, to find Icos Corporation. At Icos, he oversaw the development of another breakthrough drug, Cialis, for the treatment of erectile dysfunction. Ten years later Rathmann led a third biotech startup, Hyseq, to explore the application of gene-based therapeutics to cardiovascular disease, cancer and other conditions. The same year, he addressed the Academy of Achievement at its 2000 gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona. In this podcast, recorded on that occasion, Dr. Rathmann recalls his career in science and business, and reflects on the ethical responsibilities of this dual career path.

This podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2000 gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona, features two outstanding space scientists, Story Musgrave and Donna Shirley. Story Musgrave grew up on a farm in Western Massachusetts, with what he calls "an extraordinarily dysfunctional family." Following service in the United States Marine Corps, he earned his medical degree at Columbia University. In 1967, he was selected by NASA to be among the first cohort of astronaut-scientists. He practiced medicine as a surgeon for 20 years, while training as an Air Force pilot and helping design much of the equipment that would be used for space walks and other extravehicular activity on the Space Shuttle missions. Dr. Musgrave flew on all six vehicles of the Space Shuttle program. His ingenuity and stamina dazzled the world when he commanded the mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, in orbit high above the earth. In this podcast, he tells the Academy's student delegates about the human relationship to the earth, space and all life. He describes his own "calling" to space travel. Donna Shirley grew up in the small town of Wynnewood, Oklahoma. Her parents encouraged her academic interests, but her neighbors and teachers were surprised when the very small girl took an intense interest in flying airplanes. Before she was out of her teens, Donna Shirley was soloing and earning her pilot's licenses. She entered college in the 1950s, with the express purpose of studying aeronautic engineering when engineering schools were still an all-male bastion. From her early teens she had been fascinated by science fiction and dreamed of exploring Mars. After winning a job with NASA, she worked on the very first unmanned mission to Mars in 1966. Her devotion to Mars research came to splendid fruition on July 4, 1997. The entire world watched as the Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner Rover successfully landed on Mars. Two months later the Mars Global Surveyor successfully went into orbit around the red planet. Not only were these events two of the U.S. space program's greatest successes, but they may well provide the world with some of the most important scientific data of the 20th and 21st centuries. In this podcast, Donna Shirley weighs the expense of space exploration against its importance to extending our knowledge of the universe. In a discussion with the Academy's student delegates, Story Musgrave and Donna Shirley consider the possibilities of manned missions to Mars.

Dr. Peter Raven is a world-renowned plant biologist, conservationist, and an outspoken defender of endangered plant species. For 40 years, he was the director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. Born in China and raised in California, his interest in plants dates from his childhood. As a 14-year-old boy wandering in the hills above San Francisco Bay, he discovered a previously unnamed, nearly extinct shrub now called "Raven's manzanita." When Dr. Raven arrived at the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1971, after teaching at Stanford, he found an institution that was under-financed, under-developed and virtually ignored by its community. Under Dr. Raven's leadership, the Garden's collection was expanded, educational programs were developed, and annual attendance tripled. Raven restored the Garden's geodesic-domed conservatory, the Climatrona, and built the largest Japanese garden in North America. Today, the major research focus of the Missouri Garden is on the tropics, where much of the earth's biodiversity is centered, but where it is also exceptionally threatened by human activities. Dr. Raven helped create the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the world's pre-eminent center for plant research, where scientists explore new means to fight hunger, disease and environmental degradation. He is the author of a number of essential books in his field, including Environment and The Biology of Plants, as well as the influential essay Coevolution of Insects and Plants. He is the co-editor of Flora of China, a joint Chinese-American project to inventory all the indigenous plants of China, which constitute about an eighth of the total plant species in the world. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2000 gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona, Dr. Raven discusses the pressures placed on the environment by an ever-expanding human population, and urges the Academy's student delegates to consider what they can do to protect the planet from further destruction.

Dr. William Daniel Phillips shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to laser cooling, a technique to slow the movement of gaseous atoms in order to better study them. He was the valedictorian of his high school class in rural Pennsylvania, went on to graduate summa cum laude from college, and after that earned his physics doctorate from MIT. Phillips studied and advanced the scientific art of supercooling atoms for trapping and examination. Cooling slows the speed of atoms' movements, and extreme cooling to near absolute zero allows the atomic structure of gases to be slowed and trapped without having the gas condense and liquefy or solidify. Working with the laser-based "atom trap" designed by Steven Chu but modifying its parameters, Phillips was able to obtain temperatures even lower than those predicted and achieved by Chu's team. Phillips' results were so remarkable and far beyond what physicists thought would be feasible, he said that he could not believe it. Phillips later earned the Noble Prize in Physics, with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, for his contributions to laser cooling (and especially for his invention of the Zeeman slower) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (where he has worked his entire career). He is also a professor of physics at the University of Maryland. Dr. William Phillips participated in the 1999 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. and spoke to the student delegates about his life experiences as a scientist.

The Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom, Martin Rees was appointed to the House of Lords in 2005 as Baron Rees of Ludlow. One of the world's leading cosmologists, he is renowned for his pioneering studies of quasars, galaxies, black holes and the origins of the universe. His early study of the distribution of quasars helped discredit the "steady state" theory of the universe. He was the first to propose the now widely accepted idea that the engines driving the high-energy deep space quasars seen through the Hubble Space Telescope are actually enormous black holes. After studying at the University of Cambridge, and holding postdoctoral fellowships at distinguished universities on both sides of the Atlantic, at age 30 he was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge. Today, he is Master of Trinity College and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. In addition to his theoretical work, he has won praise for his ability to present sophisticated ideas in a language comprehensible to a general audience. His books include Gravity's Fatal Attraction and Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others, in which he proposes that the universe we know is but one particle in a much larger multiverse. From 2005 to 2010 he was President of the Royal Society. This podcast was recoded at the Academy of Achievement's 1999 Summit in Washington, D.C., after Baron Rees had received a knighthood, prior to his elevation to the peerage.

Eric Steven Lander is the founding director of the Broad Institute (a collaboration between MIT and Harvard) and director of its genome biology program. As one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project, Lander is exploring the molecular mechanisms underlying the basis of human disease. He was captain of the math team at Stuyvesant High School, and graduated in 1974, and participated in the Achievement Summit in Salt Lake City as a high school delegate. Lander then attended Princeton, and graduated as valedictorian. He went on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he wrote his doctorate in symmetric designs. As a mathematician, he studied applications of representation theory to coding theory. Lander enjoyed mathematics but did not wish to spend his life in a "monastic career." Unsure of what to do next, he took a job teaching managerial economics at Harvard Business School; he began to write a book on information theory. As the suggestion of his brother, he started to look at neurobiology. In order to understand mathematical neurobiology, Lander felt he had to study cellular neurobiology; this in turn led to his study of microbiology and he continued down to the level of genetics. Lander then joined the Whitehead Institute in 1986 and later MIT as a geneticist. In 1990, he founded the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research, and, under his leadership, it became one of the world's leading centers of genome research. The institute made important breakthroughs in the study of medical genetics. The Center formed the basis for the creation of the Broad Institute, a transformation in which Lander was instrumental. Lander is one of the driving forces behind today's revolution in genomics, and the study of all of the genes in an organism and how they function together in health and disease. In 2008, he was named with fellow Academy of Achievement member Harold E. Varmus, one of the co-chairs of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Dr. Eric Lander also attended the 1999 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. and spoke to the student delegates about his journey as a pioneering researcher.

David Breashears is an award-winning filmmaker, author, adventurer, and world-class mountaineer. Since 1978, he has combined his skills in climbing and filmmaking to complete more than 40 film projects. In 1983, Breashears transmitted the first live television pictures from the summit of Mount Everest, and in 1985 became the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest twice. In the spring of 1996, Breashears co-directed and co-produced the first IMAX film shot on Mount Everest. Breashears and his team were in the midst of making this historic film when a blizzard of historic proportions hit the mountainside, killing eight climbers. Breashears and his team stopped filming to provide assistance to the stricken climbers. After returning to Base Camp, Breashears and his team regrouped and reached the summit of the mountain, becoming the first to record IMAX film images at Earth's highest point. In 1997, Breashears performed the first live audio WebCast from the summit of Everest for the PBS science documentary series NOVA. Breashears is the recipient of four National Emmy Awards for achievement in filmmaking. His best-selling memoir High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places (Simon & Schuster) documents his life as a mountaineer and filmmaker. In the spring of 2004, Breashears reached the summit of Mount Everest for the fifth time while shooting his film Storm Over Everest. Breashears addressed the Academy of Achievement at its 1998 Summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on the anniversary of his two previous ascents of the world's tallest mountain. In this podcast, he discusses the rewards of pursuing life's most difficult challenges, and recalls the tragic events that befell his fellow climbers in 1996.

For 40 years, Martin Perl plumbed the mysteries of matter. His experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center led to the discovery of the "tau lepton," a particle similar to an electron but vastly heavier, that plays a central role in one of the most fundamental questions in physics: "What is mass, and why do things have the masses they do?" This landmark contribution to science earned him the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics. The son of Russian immigrants, he grew up in Brooklyn, New York. As a child, he loved reading, particularly mathematics and science, but a career as a scientist seemed unimaginable. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical in engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic, but was soon drawn to the ever-expanding field of particle physics and earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University. He spent much of his career as a Professor of Physics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. At the time of this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1996 Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho, he was Chairman of the High Energy Physics Faculty. Dr. Perl's presentation includes a whimsical review of his contribution to the field of particle physics, and a brief demonstration of an erasable paint system he developed with his wife, artist Judy Finer.

J. Craig Venter, biologist and entrepreneur, was among the first scientists to sequence the human genome, an accomplishment he achieved at his own institute, completely independent of the federal government's human genome project. He first became involved with human genome research while working at the National Institutes of Health. Frustrated with the slow pace of progress at NIH, he founded Celera Genomics, and the Institute for Genomic Research to continue his research independently. Dr. Venter is now President of the J. Craig Venter Institute, where he is working to create synthetic biological organisms and biofuels, and to document genetic diversity in the world's oceans.

Venter, attended the. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1996 Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho, he discusses the circuitous route that led him from a youth as a carefree surfer in Newport Beach, through service in the Vietnam War, to a career as a research scientist and a fiercely independent entrepreneur.