Source: University of Melbourne. Reproduced with permission.
Professor Peter Doherty is one of Australia’s most recent Nobel Laureates, winning the Nobel Prize in 1996 for Physiology or Medicine. He was recognised for his research into how the immune response controls virus infections, work he continues at both the University of Melbourne and St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. He has written two books, A Light History of Hot Air and The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize. He was Australian of the Year in 1997.
In the third of our four-part series, Science Hub talks to Professor Doherty about writing books, experimental mythology and intuition.
“In science there are collectors, classifiers, compulsory tidiers-up and permanent contestors, detectives, some artists and many artisans, there are poet-scientists and philosophers and even a few mystics… To the chagrin of my family, I am very Swiss and a true collector… Peter is a Celt and a true Australian and to the chagrin of his wife and of mine, he is a mystic.”
These were the words of Rolf Zinkernagel to guests at the Nobel Prize Banquet of 1996. He was honoured that year with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research into T-cell biology. The mystic Peter to whom he was referring was his co-Laureate, Brisbane-born Peter Doherty.
It is a tantalising, and at first blush, surprising image of the Peter Doherty known to many: the world-class immunologist, social commentator, author and qualified vet, schooled in livestock management of the breed ‘em, feed ‘em and eat ‘em philosophy. More than most scientists, he has built his reputation by being fact-focused and down-to-earth.
“There have been two things to my career as a scientist,” he says. “One is my capacity to write reasonably well. If you can’t, it’s very hard to communicate. The other thing is that I look at data very closely. I’m very interested in what the actual numbers are. Fitting my findings into someone else’s conceptual view, or even my own previous view is not a useful way to do science.”
It is better to be instructed by nature, says the Professor, and he practices what he preaches, training his students to avoid the mistakes of young researchers.
“There are two things it’s very hard to get a young scientist to do. One is to write, of course. They all hate to write. The second is to look very closely at their data … Everyone wants to do the next experiment without looking at what they’ve got.”
Of his own early success, Professor Doherty considers intuition as important as his analytical and writing skills.
“In science there’s a certain intuitive ability – at least, in the case of the complex science that I’ve been doing… And I’ve been doing it without the tools to do complex science, if you like. Knowing where to go and what to do is an intuitive capacity,” he says.
“That’s what Zinkernagel meant by calling me a mystic – I’m a bit intuitive and conceptual.”
As well as a full-time scientist with two laboratories in Melbourne and the USA, Professor Doherty is the author of two books, with a third on the way. His first, The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize, was not a manual for Nobel success, but an introduction to the culture of science, a topic of increasing importance as science becomes more specialised and remote from public understanding.
The Beginner’s Guide nonetheless gave young scientists some advice on tipping the Nobel odds in their favour and Professor Doherty’s top pointers were to live a long time, be generous to colleagues, learn to write well and exercise – meaning run, don’t walk, far away from committees and administrative responsibilities.
His second book, A Light History of Hot Air, was an eclectic mix of anecdotes focused on hot air in its many forms – steam, political gasbagging, and a Doherty family hot air-balloon adventure over the seasonal migration of Kenyan wildlife. It also examines climate change, a topic that the Professor is passionate about.
In writing for the public, Professor Doherty says, “What I’m trying to do is put out a broader understanding of some general concepts, and although I’ve no training in it, the ethical implications, as well as the strictly scientific issues.
“I think [scientists] do have a responsibility to get the message out if they can see that something happening is dangerous or damaging. They have to be careful, on the other hand, if speaking out on an issue they know really well – especially if it involves money – not to be painted as self-serving.”
Whether science or words are his medium for exploration, Professor Doherty is clearly a man interested in ideas, and like most scientists, and all mystics, someone searching for meaning.
“I’m interested in how you express ideas, how you probe ideas and in broad general ideas that are useful.
“I’m an experimentalist,” he continues. “I do experiments all the time – not with my personal life – that can lead you to a situation where you can be totally destroyed.”
But as he has said previously, in a careful pun, “My real expertise is microbiology, immunology and pathology and I’m an experimentalist, so if you combine those fields you get experimental mythology.” And this is perhaps apt for an intuitive immunologist of Celtic heritage, and a scientist who likes history.
Professor Doherty’s third book, in its third draft, is a science-based novel. It is the realisation of his long-held ambition of writing fiction, and an expression of his combined interests in the humanities and sciences.
“One of the things I like about writing is it makes you look at things,” he says. “It makes you to come to a new synthesis in your perception of something.
“And this is why, after trying to write a novel, I’ve got even more respect for good novelists. They start to write about something and then come to a new synthesis of it. It means something to the reader in a way the reader has never seen before.”
He has strong interests in history and politics; wants to write about synthesis and complexity, denial and scepticism; and admits had circumstances been different, he “may well have gone down the arts side of things”.
But during a formative period for the younger Doherty, he found himself reading Hemmingway and Sartre simultaneously – an experience he says jokingly left him confused for many years (“Wouldn’t you be?”). In the two authors he saw a choice: a life of action, or a life of meditation, and he made his choice to become a vet, deciding, “to be the man of action rather than the philosopher,” and in keeping with the motto of the Royal Society of London, of which he is member, that “nothing is by words alone.”
Professor Zinkernagel was circumspect as he rounded out his Nobel speech in late 1996, and suggested that he and his colleague Peter were not altogether necessary in the discovery of their prize-winning results.
“Peter, let us face it,” he said, “We’ve been lucky … Had we not found the rules of restricted immune T cell recognition, somebody else would have.”
Yet had the younger Doherty had chosen differently – a life of meditation, history and words alone – science would be all the poorer for it.
Next month, in the final part of Science Hub’s series on Professor Peter Doherty, we re-visit C.P.E Snow’s Two Cultures, and ask the Professor what it means to him.
Related articles:
- Fiat Lux – Q & A with Professor Peter Doherty
- ThinkTank – State of Australian Science: Innovation nation or a hole in the ground?
- Culture – Science and Society: The Two Cultures 50 years on – Professor Peter Doherty
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