Sidney altman

We are united in the hope that every individual will someday enjoy at least the intellectual privileges we have had, if not always the material advantages.

Indeed, we are privileged to have been afforded the opportunity to study Nature and to follow our own thoughts and inspirations in a time of relative tranquillity and in a land with a generous and...

We are very fortunate to be recognized here in such an extraordinary manner for work that we enjoy.

I was born in Montreal in 1939, the second son of poor immigrants.

By the time I reached high school my father's grocery store had made our life adequately comfortable and I was able to choose, without any practical encumbrances, the subjects that I wanted to pursue...

About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power.

Eight months later, having left Columbia, I was studying physics in a summer program and working in Colorado when I decided to enroll as a graduate student in biophysics.

The mystique associated with the bomb, the role that scientists played in it, and its general importance could not fail to impress even a six-year old.

Nevertheless, as is a frequent occurrence in science, a general hypothesis was constructed from a few specific instances of a phenomenon.

The RNA World referred to an hypothetical stage in the origin of life on Earth.