Bishop

We got several lectures by J. Michael Bishop who won the 1989 Nobel for his work on retroviral oncogenes. He and Harold Varmus discovered the first oncogene V-Src. Indeed, in his lecture, he once commented on the "Nobeligenic enzyme reverse transcriptase." He is an active professor and the Chancellor here at UCSF (though I cannot tell you exactly what that entails). Getting lectures from him on viruses that cause cancer, arboviruses, hepatitis viruses, and others was such a treat. He is an amazing storyteller who draws out the history of these diseases to make them salient. True, we'll never be tested on who Walter Reed was and what he did with Yellow Fever. But hearing him tell the story really puts science and discovery in a historical context. He's also very approachable and engaging, and I can't help but be in awe. He reminds me of Douglas Osheroff who won the 1996 Physics for superfluidity and who gives freshman physics lectures at Stanford. I've heard him talk several times. People this brilliant and this accessible really inspire me to pursue great things.