The second half of last Monday's ETH Visions Day was dedicated to the Nobel Prize winners. Seven laureates–what one could call Switzerland's "Nobel Prize Council", as moderator Roger de Weck called them in his introduction–talked about the work for which they had received the Nobel Prize and the experience of their scientific careers.

Wishes for the younger generation

The first to speak, Werner Arber (medicine, 1978), looked back on 50 years of genetic technology research. He spoke about the molecular biological fundament, something that made today's hotly debated genetic technology possible in the first place. Molecular biology made use of the selfsame mechanisms as those that occur in nature. Many evolutionary biologists, according to Arber, do not give this sufficient consideration. It was a question of breaking down Darwinism to a molecular level. If one were to set out, in type, the entire DNA letter sequence of the Genome of a higher life form it would fill over a thousand heavy volumes. By analogy, an intervention using genetic technology meant that only a few lines or pages were shifted from one volume to another.

Heinrich Rohrer (physics 1986) then addressed the listeners. In contrast to Arber he presented–not his own work–but a humorous catalogue of wishes for the coming generation. Young scientists nowadays had to satisfy a far greater range of requirements than ever before. It was a case of having to master an ever more complex instrumentarium and the flood of information had taken on quite frightening proportions. Every young researcher, according to Rohrer's first wish, should be aware of how much he or she could and wanted to do, and not merely think about what they wanted to become. He also advised them not to be distracted from their core business by terms such as "innovative", "sustainable" or "transdiciplinary". In addition to this, Rohrer wishes young researchers the ability to develop a "relaxed" relationship to politics and industry, but without surrendering the elite claim that they had as scientists. And finally, a not unimportant point, in the midst of all their work the young shouldn't forget to enjoy life.

Courage for the new

In his talk, Karl Alexander Müller (physics 1987), sketched the discovery of the phenomenon of supraconductivity. Like so many others, this case was one where coincidence had set scientists on the right track. At a time when only metals had been examined, Müller, together with Georg Bednorz, provided proof that oxides could also act as supraconductors. Research in this direction had since come to a standstill; there has been no success for many years in efforts to further increase the magical critical transition temperature. For Müller it is therefore clear that further progress can only be achieved with new compounds. Müller kept his research under wraps for a long time, partly because he did not trust his superiors to have enough courage to step out into unknown territory.

After the break Georg Bednorz, who was awarded his Nobel Prize together with Müller, told the audience how the scientific breakthrough had happened. The native German had had his first contacts with the Swiss research landscape in IBM's Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon as a student working towards his diploma. The subject of his doctoral thesis at ETH was special crystalline structures. At the time the subject had a somewhat old-fashioned ring to it, but it still threw up interesting problems. Later, as Bednorz was working in Rüschlikon again, it was precisely these structures that brought the sensational breakthrough. Working together with Müller, he was able to create the very first ceramic high-temperature supraconductor. In Switzerland, this discovery quickly led to a strong increase in research activity in this promising area of research.

Distance stimulates irony

Richard Ernst (chemistry 1991) did not want to talk about himself in his address. Rather he told the audience something of the life of his college Felix Pech, which he recounted in a laid-back manner laced with irony. Felix Pech–aka Richard Ernst–had been only a moderately good student and for a long time he hadn't seemed able to shine very brightly as a scientist either. It wasn't until after Pech started working as an engineer in the USA that he began to flourish. Even though Pech had picked up a lot of ideas from other researchers and some of his colleagues were much more creatively inclined, he was repeatedly being awarded prizes. What Ernst finds most irritating about his friend Pech was that the latter was always talking about "responsibility" and that he spoke out critically on social political themes.

The illustrious round of Nobel Prize winners at the concluding discussion. large

Also with a generous portion of irony Rolf Zinkernagel (medicine 1996) looked back on his activities as a scientist. The chances of a young researcher achieving a scientific breakthrough were 1 to 1000–at best. He was convinced that most scientist were not intelligent enough to ask important questions that could also be answered. This is why, in order to succeed, one needed luck and, above all, a lot of patience. Zinkernagel explained how he studied the immune response of living creatures with the help of genetically modified mice. Time and again in his work, he experienced how experiments had refuted traditional teaching doctrine. What was interesting, said Zinkernagel, was the unexpected and it was important for a researcher to recognise this. It is quite probable, said Zinkernagel in his summing up, that only half of what we know is true. The problem was, that we don't knowing which half.

Clearing the bar

The final person to tell the listeners something of the reason for his receiving the Nobel Prize was Kurt Wüthrich (chemistry 2002). He succeeded in improving the NMR method to such an extent that three-dimension structures of proteins can since be examined in a watery solution. This has radically changed the picture that scientists had up until then of proteins. When Wüthrich achieved the breakthrough after eight years of work the results were initially received with scepticism by the specialist community. This was always the way when someone had made a major step, said Wüthrich laconically. As a one-time sports teacher, however, he had been convinced that he had cleared the bar, he said, using an analogy from the high jump. Sport had taught him to make quantitative judgements and given him the ability to decide whether a result was good or not. This kind of attitude towards work needed to be conveyed more strongly in educational establishments. Wüthrich's advise to young researchers was to live and work in another country for a long time, long enough to establish oneself at a reasonable level. Even after his official retirement, Wüthrich is still working actively in science–not as a coach to his co-workers, naturally, but as an engaged trainer.