Barry Sharpless '63: Dartmouth's Nobel laureate on the sweet smell of success

"SMELLS ARE MY PASSION. At Dartmouth I memorized the smells of all the compounds in the chemical stockroom. It was only a thousand or so. No big deal."

"MY REAL INTEREST IN SMELLS IS THEIR EMOTIONAL CONTENT. I was able to simulate in the lab the musty smell of my family's old summer house basement. I found that very relaxing."

"I'VE ALWAYS BEEN A MANIACAL, INTENSE PERSON WHO DEVOURS WHATEVER APPEALS TO ME. As I get older I get more intense. I have to go where the excitement is."

"IF YOU CAN'T READ MY MIND, YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND ME VERY WELL." "MOST SCIENTISTS ARE PRETTY MUCH BETWEEN REALLY WEIRD AND ALMOST NORMAL. I'm not very good at normal things. I'm not good at putting myself in other people's shoes."

"YOU CAN SUSTAIN INTEREST IN A FIELD FOB SOMEONE WHO'S MARGINAL but you won't make them want to do something special unless they have it in their souls."

"WITH ANYTHING THAT TAKES BRAIN POWER AND DEVOTION, KNOWLEDGE BUILDS ON TOP OF ITSELF. You've got to know the first thing to know the second thing. And you're getting further and further away from what you can explain to your mother."

"I CAN SEE BRILLIANCE IN OTHERS A AND ALSO WHAT MASQUERADES AS A GENIUS: a tongue so fast it's total recall."

"PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPERANALYTICALLY SMART AREOFTEN WEAK WHEN ITCOMES TO MAKING CONNECTIONS. They can put one foot in front of the other but are thrown off if they have to take a side step. They don't seek out areas of curiosity or chaos because they expect everything to fall into place."

"I LIKE ROBERT FROST'S OBSERVATION THAT ALL HUMAN THOUGHT IS METAPHOR. IT'S A REALLY COOL IDEA. Of course the metaphor had to start somewhere, like at our genotype. Everything is connected to everything."

"IT'S A FASCINATING UNIVERSE. I don't have any idea why its here, and I don't even want to know why it's here."

"WHEN I MADE THE DISCOVERY THAT WON THE NOBEL PRIZE, I'D BEEN WORKING TOWARD IT FOR ABOUT EIGHT YEARS. I realized its importance because it was better than even I expected. It was unprecedented because nature hadn't taught us to expect it."

"I'M PROUD OF HAVING DONE USEFUL THINGS. I don't see the logic of going off in any of the infinite directions science could take us if there is no benefit."

"I FIND IT REALLY BIZARRE THAT THE NOBEL ORGANIZERS CONVENE THE PRIZE WINNERS EVERY YEAR TO TALK ABOUT CHALLENGES LIKE DEFEATING TERRORISM OR ESTABLISHING WORLD PEACE. You've got people who've been very good at something, often at a cost to other parts of their lives. There are probably more dysfunctional families represented among Nobel laureates than in an average group, so how the hell are they going to solve humanity's problems?"

"I HAVE A VISION THAT MANUFACTURING DRUGS WILL BECOME SO SIMPLE THE BEST DRUGS WON'T COST SO MUCH BECAUSE ANYONE WILL BE ABLE TO DO IT. like putting a computer together. Too bad for the pharmaceutical companies."

THE BEST THING YOU COULD FIND FOR PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, ESPECIALLY THE POOR AND DOWNTRODDEN, WOULD BE SOME SORT OF INJECTION THAT CAUSES INTEREST IN A PARTICULAR SUBJECT. Without it, nobody is going to want to help you and you won't be able to help yourself."

"FRATERNITY LIFE AT DARTMOUTH PROVIDED A GLIMPSE OF a MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAH. When I saw AnimalHouse I said to my wife, 'That's nothing.'"

"IF THEY EVER MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT MY LIFE MY KIDS WOULD INSIST THAT HARRISON FORD PORTRAY ME. According to them, I looked like him when I had a little more hair. Also, I like the Indiana Jones thing."

JOB TITLE: W.M. Keck Professor of Chemistry and director of the Sharpless Lab at Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California PERSONAL: Wife Jan; children Hannah, Will and Ike EDUCATION: B.A., chemistry, Dartmouth (with high distinction); Ph.D., Stanford '68; post-doctoral studies at Stanford and Harvard NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT: Winner of 2001 Nobel Prize for his 1980 discovery of the "Sharpless Espoxidation," a way to synthesize useful chemical compounds without producing their sometimes dangerous mirror images.