[continued from previous message]   
      
   >>> few people knew that Maud Menten was a Canadian woman.)   
   >>   
   >> Well, at least you tried.  I took first year chemistry the year after   
   >> Herzberg won the Nobel, but he was never mentioned.  I didn't come   
   >> across his name, except in passing, until I took QM two years later.   
   >   
   > Incidentally, French students are no more interested than those of   
   > Guelph in history, in my experience. A few years ago I was talking about   
   > Monod, Changeux and Jacob in a lecture. I showed a picture of the   
   > Institut Jacques Monod in Paris, and I asked if anyone could tell me   
   > what Monod had done to deserve a massive new building in his name: no   
   > one had any idea. Likewise with Changeux and Jacob.   
   >   
      
   In the late 1970's I took majors Biochemistry at Berkeley.  It started   
   off as a good experience because I had Koshland as an instructor for the   
   first quarter, but then it went downhill.  Koshland had a knack for   
   making his lectures interesting.  The last quarter was taught by   
   Schekman.  It was mostly nucleic acid biochemistry and I was frankly   
   bored, and at the time I was deeply into doing my undergraduate research   
   most nights and I ended up sleeping in the class most days because it   
   was my first morning class.  One test question asked how to identify the   
   tryptophan operon repressor.  I answered with how Jacob and Monod had   
   done it with the lac operon.  The answer that he wanted was that   
   bacterial extracts bound tryptophan in a dialysis bag creating a higher   
   concentration of tryptophan in the bag compared to the outside solution.   
     It was probably the only time I went in and tried to get more credit   
   for any test answer, but Schekman said that my answer was a genetic   
   answer and not biochemistry.  Even though his answer only indicated that   
   something had an affinity for tryptophan inside the dialysis bag and was   
   not direct evidence for identification of a tryptophan repressor he   
   would not accept a correct answer.  He even told me that my answer was   
   correct.  As crazy as this exchange was Schekman ended up getting the   
   Nobel prize for integrating genetics and Biochemistry years later, but   
   at the time he was a new hire in the biochemistry department.   
      
   Ron Okimoto   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)