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Renato Dulbecco (of DMEM fame) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1975, for demonstrating that DNA from oncoviruses can incorporate into normal cells, causing some forms of cancer. He shared the Prize with two former students, Howard Temin and David Baltimore, who were recognized for their work on the enzyme that makes DNA copies of RNA from tumour viruses: reverse transcriptase.

In this Web of Stories video, Dulbecco describes waiting until after the last possible moment to learn of a new result (while giving a talk at Cold Spring Harbor!), and tells us what he thinks is necessary for successful innovation:

young people who come must be free, so that they can do their work

You can view this video with English subtitles at the Web of Stories site, and I’ve pasted the translation below the fold.

Web of Stories, along with F1000 and The Scientist, is part of the Science Navigation Group.

English translation:

And I remember that all this happened when I had to go to Cold Spring Harbor, in Long Island, where there were important conferences, there is one every year in the summer, and there was a test that had to be carried out and the result had already been obtained, but there was another test to check that it wasn’t an artefact. My colleagues were preparing this, so I said- Okay, I’m going, I’m ready because I have to talk about this- I am ready to report on this, so send me a telegram to let me know the result of this test, if the test works or not. And I remember, I waited and waited and the telegram didn’t arrive; then came the time when I had to go onto the podium to speak, I started to speak and I started to explain all this saying that we were still waiting for this test then- at that moment an assistant arrived with the telegram, so I read it and the test was perfect, so there was a huge applause. It arrived just in time. Yes. How long did it take to reach this result in the telegram? Oh, a few years, all in all- because it was a whole series of situations- The importance was also this integration with other groups, because something.- Yes, precisely but this is the great thing. When we- for me, I learned from Levi, it was necessary to have- young people who come must be free, so that they can do their work. Therefore, when one of them came, I started to discuss where we were and I would say- We know this point, then it is necessary to see what we can do to progress- and see what technologies this person had and then see how to integrate this and so things would work well because-