KOCHI: Two days after getting stranded on a houseboat in Alappuzha due to the strike on January 7, Michael Levitt, the 2013 chemistry Nobel laureate, was all praise for Kerala. He was at Cochin University of Science and Technology with his wife on Friday to participate in a session organised as part of the inaugural function of NR Madhava Menon Interdisciplinary Center for Research Ethics and Protocols.
“Kerala is a special and different place. It is trying to deal with problems in a way that urges the world to look up to it; the world needs places like Kerala,” said Levitt. While interacting with students, he elucidated about the wonders of science. Starting with a story about his journey from being a researcher to a Nobel laureate, he said, “Learn to stand on the shoulders of giants if you want to reach the heights.” According to him, he had three such giants in his life.
“Francis Crick who co-authored with James Watson in proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, and John Kendrew and Max Perutz who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their investigation in the structure of heme-containing proteins, were my giants,” said Levitt. However, Michael considers Perutz as an ethical giant since he loved to work independently. “Science is not about the money, it is about the recognition,” he said.
Michael reminisced the time when he started as a researcher in 1967. “Just look at how computers have changed. They have become 10,000 times cheaper, 10,000 times faster, 10,000 times more capable of storage and 10,000 times smaller. If cars were like computers, the new Volvo would cost $3, would have a top speed of 20,00,000 km/hr, would carry 50,000 adults and park in a shoebox. Which is quite funny for a car,” he laughed.
However, he despaired about the lack of ethics among human beings. “People can’t learn ethics from biological intelligence since we didn’t create them,” he said. According to him, the evolution of eukaryotes including humans is not survival of the fittest, but survival of the most diverse,” he added. He advised students to be passionate, persistent, original, kind and the best at what they do. “It is alright to be wrong;
a good scientist is wrong 90 per cent of the time, and a great scientist is wrong 99 per cent of the time,”
said Levitt.