Words to work by

Clearing out his office, Peter Kettlewell uncovered advice to help guide a research career

Few researchers will ever get the chance to ask the world’s most successful scientists and scientific entrepreneurs for advice. Journalists, however, get this opportunity regularly, and I have always looked to their articles in the hope of making my research more successful. 

During a recent office move, sorting through mounds of paperwork accumulated over 40 years, I came across a folder where I had stored magazine cuttings of these articles and highlighted seminal quotes. In hindsight, I saw that the quotes fell into two groups: advice that I used consciously and frequently, and advice that is harder to put into practice but may have influenced me unconsciously.