9486 in the collection
Man Who Set Stage for a Nobel Now Lives a Life Outside Science
Ohanian Comment: This
is a combined Outrage-Good News story, as Douglas C. Prasher sounds like such a
remarkable man, able to free himself from "What
ifs," outrage, and rancor. But there's a lot of
heartbreak here, as well as generous spirit of
Mr. Prasher. He lost his job at Woods Hole
because funding ran out. The rule of thumb is
that scientists have to find grants to fund
themselves and all the lab assistants and
whopping overhead to the institution. I speak
from personal family experience.
We can only hope that the Nobelists will share
their winnings, and that this publicity will
mark Prasher's return to science.
By Kenneth Chang
In a couple of months, Roger Y. Tsien and
Martin Chalfie will head to Stockholm to
collect the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and
$450,000 each in prize money in recognition of
their development of a revolutionary technique
that lights up the inner workings of living
cells.
Meanwhile, the scientist who provided the
essential piece that made Dr. Tsien’s and Dr.
Chalfie’s work possible — a jellyfish gene that
produces a fluorescent protein — is out of
science.
Douglas C. Prasher, who conducted his research
on the Aequorea victoria jellyfish while at the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts in the early 1990s, now drives a
courtesy van for a car dealer in Huntsville,
Ala., earning $10 an hour. He said he was not
bitter or jealous of this year’s winning
chemistry Nobelists: Dr. Tsien of the
University of California, San Diego, Dr.
Chalfie of Columbia and Osamu Shimomura, the
original discoverer of the jellyfish protein in
1961.
Trained as a biochemist, Dr. Prasher, 57, was
interested in the chemistry of how certain
animals are able to glow. In the late 1980s, he
applied to the National Institutes of Health
for a five-year grant to track down the
fluorescent protein gene.
Dr. Prasher said his proposal included
speculation on how the fluorescent protein
might be used as a beacon to light up
structures in cells. “That would have certainly
been part of my research program,” Dr. Prasher
said. “I knew it could serve as a genetic
marker and it would be really, really useful,
which it has turned out to be.”
That application was turned down. A parallel
proposal to the American Cancer Society
succeeded, giving Dr. Prasher only two years of
financing, enough time to isolate the gene, but
not pursue any applications.
By then, however, Dr. Prasher had decided that
Woods Hole was not the place for him. Instead
of going through the tenure process — he
thought he would be turned down, anyway — he
looked for a new job. Dr. Chalfie and Dr. Tsien
independently contacted Dr. Prasher asking
about the jellyfish gene. Dr. Prasher
generously shared the gene with both of them.
Dr. Prasher then worked for the United States
Department of Agriculture, first on Cape Cod
and later in Beltsville, Md., developing
methods for identifying pests and other
insects. Again, he was not happy, experiencing
the beginning of bouts of depression. “I was
not happy with management there, so I looked
for another position,” he said.
His next move was to Huntsville, where he
worked for a NASA subcontractor that was
developing mini-chemistry laboratories, which
would be needed as health diagnostic tools for
a potential human flight to Mars. Dr. Prasher
loved that job, but NASA eliminated the
financing for the project. For family reasons,
he stayed in Huntsville, which restricted his
opportunities. “The amount of life science done
here is very limited,” he said.
The depression returned. “That’s been a serious
problem off and on, but anyone who doesn’t have
a job has that problem,” Dr. Prasher said. “If
they don’t, there’s a problem with them. Or
they’re independently wealthy.”
After a year of unemployment, he started
driving the van for Bill Penney Toyota, his job
for the last year and a half.
When the Nobel in chemistry was announced two
weeks ago, Dr. Prasher received some news media
attention, and he said someone in Chicago who
had read about him called and offered a check.
“That totally freaked me out,” Dr. Prasher
said. “We actually had a nice conversation.”
Dr. Prasher also said, perhaps with a bit of
surprise even to himself, that he would have
been uncomfortable if he had been selected as
one of the Nobel winners, nudging aside one of
the others. (Each Nobel traditionally is shared
by no more than three people.) “There are other
people who would have deserved it a whole lot
more than me,” he said. “They worked their
butts off over their entire lives for science,
and I haven’t.”
— Kenneth Chang
New York Times
2008-10-16
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/science/16prasher.html?ref=science
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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