Irwin Rose

We left my birthplace, Brooklyn, New York, in 1939 when I was 13. I enjoyed the ethnic variety and the interesting students in my public school, P.S. 134. The kids in my neighborhood were only competitive in games, although unfriendly gangs tended to define the limits of our neighborhood.

My interest in protein breakdown as a research problem began in l955 at about the time I joined the Biochemistry Department of Yale University. It was known that proteins break down intracellularly in the mature animal.

I floated around in the department of biochemistry and learned some interesting things, and then I began to... I never wanted to work with a mentor because I always wanted to have my own reputation and be free to do what I wanted to do. So I worked with the weakest people in the department. Don't make that public.

I studied psychology for a couple of years as a personal hobby, so you start learning about people and listening to your intuition, like when you you're feeling that people are not being entirely straight with you.