“Curiosity is the engine of achievement.”

The end of the semester is fast approaching, and I want to recommend an excellent read for this summer. The book is called The Code Breaker, by Walter Isaacson, a historian from Tulane University who has written biographies of Leonardo Da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Henry Kissinger. I like his writing because he is always so interesting and explains complex concepts in a way that’s easy to understand. The Code Breaker follows the life and work of Professor Jennifer Doudna, best known for her discovery of a gene-editing technology that provided a pathway for the COVID vaccine. This is a fascinating story, so I am sure the local library has it in store.

Reading about Professor Doudna’s accomplishments reminded me that one of our basic human attributes is curiosity. Most of the breakthrough discoveries and remarkable inventions throughout history are the result of curiosity, from using flint to start a fire to the biotech revolution that is at the core of solving the COVID pandemic through the vaccines that Pfizer, Moderna, and other companies have developed. These are the first vaccines ever to be activated by what is called the “messenger RNA molecule (mRNA),” which is a “brother” to DNA. DNA contains genetic information, and RNA serves to transmit the genetic code. These recent discoveries came about because of the curiosity of many scientists, including Professor Doudna at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Doudna was curious about the RNA molecule, and in 1996, she was the first scientist to uncover the basic structure and function of RNA. In 2012, Professor Doudna and others developed the technology known as CRISPR, which makes it possible to edit human genes and helps us become less vulnerable to pandemics, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases.

It was the curiosity of Dr. Doudna and her team that allowed the scientific community to find a path to the vaccine. She was not looking to create COVID vaccines when she started studying RNA while doing her doctoral degree at Harvard in 1989—that would come many years later, by other researchers--she only was curious as to what the RNA molecule did. In March of 2020, with the pandemic spreading fast, she and her team start exploring how the CRISPR technology already at hand could detect and destroy the coronavirus. This allowed pharmaceutical companies to produce vaccines for COVID in record time. In the numerous interviews she has given, she credits curiosity with leading her to study more deeply the structure of the RNA molecule. And her curiosity paid off. In 2020, she and another female French scientist from Humboldt University in Germany, Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize for their collaborative work with CRISPR. This gene editing technology will likely change the world in the next few decades.

Albert Einstein put it best when he said, “Curiosity has its own reason for existing. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” True, we may never win Nobel Prizes or make discoveries that will change the world--although one never knows! However, our sense of curiosity gives us the chance to design new opportunities, of all kinds, that will benefit not only ourselves but the work we do in our field or office and the communities where we live. So, here I say to you, quoting Dr. Duodna’s words, “Go for your biggest and most exciting ideas, and don’t let anyone tell you that it won’t work.” Have fun this summer!