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After nine years at Bell labs, I decided to leave that warm, cozyivory towerfor what I considered to be the “real world,” a university. Bell Labs, to quote what was said about Mary Poppins, was “practically perfect in every way,” but I wanted to leave behind something more than scientific articles. I wanted to teach and I wanted to give birth to my own set of scientific children.
在貝爾實驗室待了9年后，我決定離開這個溫暖舒適的象牙塔，走進我眼中的“真實世界”——大學。我對貝爾實驗室的看法，可以引用瑪麗·波平斯的話，“實際上十全十美”。但是，我想為世界留下更多東西，而不只是科學論文。我要去教書，培育我自己在科學上的后代。
Ted Geballe, a friend and distinguished colleague of mine at Stanford, went from Berkeley to Bell Labs to Stanford years earlier, described our motives best, and I quote:
我在斯坦福大學有一個好友兼杰出同事泰德·格貝拉。他也是從伯克利分校去了貝爾實驗室，幾年前又離開貝爾實驗室去了斯坦福大學。他對我們的動機做出了最佳描述：
“The best part of working at a university is the students. They come in fresh,enthusiastic, open to ideas,unscarredby the battles of life. They don’t realize it, but they’re therecipientsof the best our society can offer. If a mind is ever free to be creative, that’s the time. They come in believing textbooks areauthoritative, but eventually they figure out that textbooks and professors don’t know everything, and then they start to think on their own. And then, I began learning from them.”
“在大學工作，最大的優點就是能和學生們在一起。他們生機勃勃，充滿熱情，思想自由，還沒被生活的重壓改變。雖然他們自己沒有意識到，但是他們是這個社會中你能找到的最佳接受者。如果生命中只有一段時間是思想自由且充滿創造力，那么那段時間就是在大學期間。進校時，學生們對課本上的一字一句毫不懷疑，漸漸地，他們發現課本和教授并不是無所不知的，于是他們開始獨立思考。從那時起，就是我開始向他們學習了。”
My students, post doctoral fellows, and the young researchers who worked with me at Bell Labs, Stanford, and Berkeley have beenextraordinary. Over 30 former group members are now professors, many at the best research institutions in the world, including Harvard. I have learned much from them. Even now, in rare moments on weekends, the remaining members of mybiophysicsgroup meet with me in theetherworld ofcyberspace.
我在貝爾實驗室、斯坦福大學和伯克利大學教過的學生、帶過的博士后、合作過的年輕同事都非常優秀。他們中有30多人現在已經是教授了。他們所在的研究機構有不少是世界第一流的，其中就包括哈佛大學。我從他們身上學到了很多東西。即使現在，我周末偶爾還會上網，和還在從事生物物理學的研究組成員在網絡世界里相聚。
