Ambion: You received your Ph.D. in physical chemistry, but your scientific pursuits were amazingly varied (from bacterial genetics to DNA structure to neurobiology and even the history and philosophy of science). Of your many different pursuits, which did you find the most rewarding?

Dr. Stent: I found all of them rewarding, really. The problem is that I get bored. I see something new, and it becomes exciting for me, so I move on.

Ambion: You once cited Max Delbruck as a scientist that helped influence your career. Can you explain how?

Dr. Stent: His interests were also varied, like mine. And you see, working for him was like being in the army. He told me what to do, how to do it, where to eat, who to date… <laughing>. And I was not the only one; many went through his lab and were influenced by him. He was just that kind of person.

Ambion: As you may know, Ambion is currently highlighting the endeavors of the RNA Tie Club on our website. I have a few questions for you that have to do with your involvement in the Tie Club.

First, it is said that world's most creative scientists are successful, in part, because they surround themselves with equally creative and smart people. What influence did the members of the RNA Tie Club have on your career, and how did the information and correspondences between the Tie Club members affect your views of the relationship between RNA, DNA and protein and the early days of molecular biology?

Dr. Stent: They had no influence over me. You see, it was really just a joke. Gamov founded the Tie Club for people to have a conversation with, but I don’t think it had much influence on the members. All of us knew each other already, and we didn’t need Gamov to bring us together. It was largely a joke.

Ambion: If an RNA Tie Club were to form today, who would you like to see join it?

Dr. Stent: You cannot do that - those times are gone. I don’t know if there is room for any such club. Molecular biology, at that time, didn’t even have a name yet. Those times are over – the past – and they cannot be recreated. Once the structure was determined, things were different. It was like before and after Christ. Things are either before or after the double helix.

Ambion: What prompted you to write “Prematurity and Uniqueness in Science” and did you anticipate it would attract such a large and diverse audience? (Stent GS (1972) Prematurity and uniqueness in scientific discovery. Scientific American 227:84-93.) http://www.kli.ac.at/theorylab/AuthPage/S/StentGS.html

Dr. Stent: While spending a summer at Cold Spring Harbor taking a phage course, I met Salvador Luria and Richard Roberts (a physicist from the Carnegie Institution with an interest in biology). I witnessed some tremendous arguments that they had about extra sensory perception. Roberts was proposing to do some experiments on ESP, and Luria said this was rubbish, so the two had a big fight. On the one hand, Luria said Roberts was not a real scientist for thinking about such rubbish. While Roberts said that Luria was not a real scientist because the duty of a scientist is to explore something that is unknown. So it seemed to me that both were right and both were wrong, and both seemed like intelligent people. I puzzled over this for years. Well, Michael Polanyi had written about prematurity in the 1920’s, and after reading his work I had the solution. I said that the ESP concept was premature. You couldn’t do anything about it because there was no data that you could find that could be connected with what we knew. Take Avery’s work with transformation - he had a good group of people, but the idea of what DNA was biochemically was not reconcilable with the idea that it was carrying genetic information. As Edding (a physicist in the 20’s) said, you shouldn’t put too much confidence in experimental data until they have been proven by theory. Anyhow, I wrote this article in Scientific American and it caused a big stink; it made me a lot of enemies, actually. Although I wasn’t by any means the first to propose this idea of prematurity.

Ambion: Did you anticipate that it would attract such a large and diverse audience?

Dr. Stent: I thought it was trivial, actually. I was totally surprised. Scientific American had asked me to write an article and offered me $300. Well, it was a big honor, and I had never had $300 before <laughing>. So I wrote it and thought it was kind of a shame that it would be trivial. I never thought it would cause such a storm. This was my first encounter with controversy, but I went on to write other things about how science is finished, and those things made me more enemies.

Ambion: In 1998 you published an autobiographical memoir entitled Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology. That is an intriguing title. Could you tell us a little bit about it?

Dr. Stent: Yes, sure. First of all, my original title was “From Berlin to Berlin”. There have been several autobiographies by famous people, such as “From Berlin to Jerusalem”; there is one even “From Berlin to Berkley” and “From Berlin to Paris”. These are stories of mostly German Jewish emigrants – all who came from Berlin and how they made good in a new place finally. So I decided to title mine “From Berlin to Berlin”, indicating that I had gone no place actually – I was just the same guy I always was. Various people told me that this was not a good title, however. A friend of mine asked me what the book was going to be about. I explained that the three main themes were: one, the nazis – with which I grew up; then, my fascination with women, which was my other main interest; and, finally, molecular biology. So he said, “Why don’t you call it that, if that is what the book is about?”. So that is what I did. I don’t know if everyone appreciated it. I couldn’t find a publisher; it was a tremendous disappointment. So I finally published it myself. I made my own publishing company, Briones Books, named after a wonderful park here in Berkley.

Ambion: You have seen many advances in molecular biology since you entered the field, could you pick one discovery in particular as most outstanding?

Dr. Stent: I would have to say all of it. If someone would have predicted what was going to happen, I would have said it was moonshine and couldn’t possibly be. Jacques Monod, one of the co-founders of molecular biology, said the idea of gene manipulation was all bologna, it would never happen, it was impossible. We all thought that determining the sequence of life was interesting as an intellectual enterprise, but that you could become a billionaire, as many of my friends have, we never would have believed this would be possible. Genetic engineering, for instance, sure, it seemed theoretically possible, but that this would be practically possible, I would have never believed. And, actually, it is interesting that none of my colleagues, the founders of molecular biology, none of them became billionaires. But our students, they are unbelievably rich. It is an interesting generational gap. The people we trained had the good sense to go into business <laughing>.

Ambion: Do you believe scientific research as a whole changed significantly since your start in 1948?

Dr. Stent: I think so. In the old days, the founders of molecular biology, we were romantics. We were interested mainly in problems and seeing them solvable – this was to measure yourself against the infinite – that seemed very attractive. But now, it is all more or less clear what needs to be done. I quit molecular biology to go into neurobiology, and that’s still today an area for romantics - like the study of consciousness, for instance. Like Francis Crick, whom I think was the greatest genius - a lot of the guys in molecular biology were unbelievably smart, but I think he topped them all - he began to study consciousness about 10 to 15 years ago, and he didn’t get any place. This is kind of discouraging to me, because I am interested in it, but when I think that Francis Crick couldn’t figure out anything about it, it is not very likely that I can do anything about it. So the romantics that are left, they work on consciousness.

Ambion: What are your plans now that you are retired?

Dr. Stent: I would say my life hasn’t changed (since I retired). I still teach, although I don’t do anymore laboratory work because I do not have a lab. Perhaps the biggest change is that the classes I used to teach had hundreds of students (a general biology course) and now my class (on free will) has 15 students, so that is a change.