I recently met a personal hero of mine. I couldn't think of anything remotely intelligent to say and instead stood grinning like an overbaring Cheshire cat while we took a selfie. The only thing that I could think was she has a Wikipedia page. Clearly this is something Françoise Barré-Sinoussi doesn't regard as one of her greatest achievements: the discovery of HIV or the 2008 Nobel Prize for Physiology and medicine probably ranks up there.
I wondered, while I stood there looking geeky, what she thought of these young PhDs gawking at her. In the speech she made later that day she said that scientists place too much emphasis on high impact papers. She said when you go to bed at night, papers that no one reads do not matter. At which point a bunch of people in the audience (predominantly clinicians and scientists) rolled their eyes; these people probably were also on a nature paper recently. She said that she tells her students to get out of the lab and to meet the people affected so they can look them in the eye and understand, not at a biological level but at a human level. That is where greatness is born.
I began to wonder if that is a lesson only learned by science's elite as they get older. Had she been awarded the Oscar of science at 25 say, how would her attitude be different? Filled with the folly and arrogance of youth or bolstered her to greater heights at a younger age? How much do these awards mean to the people who get them when they are only given 20 odd years after the fact?
Of course these mullings would all have been better things to think than "She has a Wikipedia page" when I met this great science mind. It is unlikely that I will ever be in close proximity to her again but with any luck, I will take her message to heart. Remember who you are working for. It is not for honour or accolade, it is for the people - past, present and future. A scientists reward: the selfish joy of discovery. And then there's a realisation that your tiny piece of information fits into an never ending jigsaw puzzle, the greatest one ever built. And if it doesn't fit, well, someone is bound to stand up and tell you that at a conference. Ah science, thy fickle beast!
