How to Win the Nobel Prize: An Unexpected Life in Science (review)

J. Michael Bishop is a modest and generous and modestly famous man. On 9 October 1989, at 3:00 A.M., he received the call from Stockholm that leading scientists cannot help but covet: he had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for demonstrating that genes in otherwise normal cells can, when incited, cause cancer. Excited colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, where Bishop (now chancellor) spent most of his academic life, scheduled a press conference for 11:00 that morning. But Bishop already had plans, and the Nobel Prize was not about to change them. He had tickets for a "crucial playoff game between the Chicago Cubs and the San Francisco Giants baseball teams," he recounts in How to Win the Nobel Prize, a charming book about his life that, in turns, has been devoted to research, politics, institutional leadership, the public understanding of science, and baseball: "Let the record show that I am an ardent Giants fan. I was unflinching: the press conference was moved to 8:30 A.M. so that I could arrive at the ballpark in time for batting practice, an essential ritual for the cognoscenti" (p. 4).

In an anecdote that accompanies his story about the baseball game, Bishop touches astutely on one of the things that keep people away from science and scientists—namely, complex facts: "The Giants won the game and, thus, the National League Championship when Will Clark drove a two-out single 'up the middle' off a no-balls and two-strike pitch from Mitch Williams. I will remember that piece of trivia long after I have forgotten Avogadro's number (a physical constant of some use to scientists, but that does not come readily to mind even now)" (p. 4). In a world in which scientists often seem remote or even fearsome, Bishop establishes by the fourth page of his book that it is possible to engage in highly original experiments with chicken viruses that eventually establish an important principal of cancer; to win the Nobel Prize; and to be a normal human being too. He writes with grace and ease, packing into a book of fewer than three hundred pages a comprehensive and readily accessible account of his research, the ideal social ethos of science, national politics, and the relationship between science and culture.

Bishop shared the prize with Harold E. Varmus, who joined his UCSF laboratory in 1970 as a postdoctoral fellow but quickly became a colleague. As Bishop writes: "Our relationship evolved rapidly to one of equals," (p. 54) and before long "we became a hyphenated self that gave its name to a social organism—the 'Bishop-Varmus' laboratory," (p. 55) that was the center of study oncogenes. First they isolated a gene, called SRC (pronounced "sark," for sarcoma), from a chicken tumor virus. Subsequently they showed that oncogenes exist in many kinds of tumors, and established a genetic paradigm for cancer. Bishop's explication of the science of tumor genes is one of the best there is. And his description of the defining moment in the laboratory exemplifies his generosity and gentle spirit: he recalls a young scientist who, on the night of Saturday, 26 October 1974, completed a crucial experiment demonstrating that normal DNA contains gene sequences related to the SRC gene that transforms healthy cells into malignant ones. "Where was I at the moment of magic?" Bishop asks; probably home in bed, giving his student the satisfaction of not having to share the magic moment with anyone else, he says without a trace of envy.

As his life in science progressed, Bishop embraced a lesson that many in the ivory tower resist: funding for science comes from Congress, members of the House and Senate are creatures of politics, and if scientists want continued support they had better become adept at speaking out in their own interest (which Bishop...