I was totally oblivious to the Prize.
I knew about Nobel Prizes, and I thoughtwonderful people had gotten this accomplishment.
I thought of it then as being something thatmight grace the end of your career and had
given it absolutely no thought and would havethought it preposterous that I was even being
considered for it.
This was not modesty.
I feltmy work was potentially as important as that
of some other Prize winners, but I thoughtI was
very young and I thought there was plentyof time to let that work out, so I was quite
astonished when it came about.
I had somewhat ambivalent feelings about thePrize
altogether.
I have a very deep sense of how science isso reticulated - and to pick out any one
individual or any one contribution - you mustbe very, very careful that you're really doing
justice to the whole network of knowledgeand science in which that's embedded.
Now, Iguess my own work was more singular than that
of many others in that regard-I think therewas no doubt that I wasn't being crowded with
competition.
On the contrary, I had a jobselling the case about my findings and so
forth.
But the basic issue was that of timelinessand
I was really quite astonished when the news. . .
Hyde: The phone call came?
Lederberg : . . . the phone call came.
I didn't believe it.
I thought it was a practical joke.
Butit eventuated.
It was so.
And I was deeply honored by being able tobe on the podium with
my mentors - with Beadle and Tatum, who hadsort of founded the field in which I had come
up.