And similarly, of course, [Jim] Watson's key role in the genome project, the human genome project, and getting that started. Few people know that he actually inspired the Arabidopsis project. He was originally going to recommend Arabidopsis as one of the genomes to be sequenced at the NIH with the human genome project, along with Drosophila and C. elegans and other model genomes. Actually it ended up being taken over by the NSF but the head of the NSF will tell you that it was actually Watson who got that going. So I think this was the right place to be for that project.

Dr. Robert Martiennsen is a plant biologist, Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation investigator, and professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Martiennsen attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge, completing his BA in 1982 and continuing on to his PhD in 1986 on the molecular genetics of alpha-amylase gene families in common wheat. He received an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship with University of California, Berkeley. In 1989, he was hired as a principal investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. As a young scientist, he worked closely with Barbara McClintock. His awards and honors include the Newcomb Cleveland Prize, McClintock Prize, and Science’s Breakthrough of the Year in 2002 and the Kumho International Science Award in Plant Biology and Biotechnology (2001).