Think of innovators as gift-giverstheir work results in bounty for the rest of us.
Some innovators set out to do good; others are simply trying to do well.
To succeed takes more than intelligence.
It takes persistence, focus, and the sort of insight that comes to the well-prepared mind.
Their careers are long arcs of intense dedication, idea building upon idea.
And success has sharpened them.
Their reputations secure, many veteran innovators feel freer to take risks.
Along with this freedom comes a generosity of spirit, a desire to pass knowledge on.
This, of course, is their part in a chain.
They acknowledge the debts they owe to their predecessors.
They know progress comes in steps.
One result of this incremental progress is that new ideas are often underestimated.
Thomas Edison was sure that the phonograph would be of use chiefly to stenographers.
Who can blame him for not envisioning Sensurround?
But our very blindness to the future is part of the magic of new ideas.
We live in an era of unprecedented discovery.
Any day, one of a thousand developments could radically alter our lives.
But cancer cells are immortal.
In 1985, Blackburn discovered why: an enzyme she named telomerase.
In theory, to turn off the enzyme is to stop cancer.
And telomerase might also keep healthy cells alive indefinitely.
Blackburn’s finding launched a field devoted to altering the cell’s life span.
Recognition came late for Bourgeois, who didn’t have a major public commission until 1978.
“That is the most important thing I have said.
“Is greatness being a president?”
“An emperor?”
He has preached religious tolerance and launched an urban rehabilitation program in Atlanta.
Why was he invited to these places?
Partly because his missionary sensibility implies integrity.
Consequently, he will gamble that even brutal dictators have consciences and can be redeemed.
To admirers, Carter is America’s global conscience.
His detractors see calculated attempts to rehabilitate a mediocre record as president while securing a spot in heaven.
But nobody would dispute Carter’s unwavering confidence that he can succeed where others failed.Call it compassionate hubris.
Coleman’s frenetic, soulful improvisations defied all conventions.
“I don’t know what it is,” Dizzy Gillespie sniffed.
“But it’s not jazz.”
Others called his musicgrounded in a system Coleman dubbed “harmolodics"an atonal racket.
But they quickly grew disillusioned with bold, sterile high rises and unwalkable, isolating suburbs.
Their first town, Seaside, Florida, was a stunning success.
Since then, Duany and Plater-Zyberk have helped plan more than 200 communities.
“I missed the ‘mommy track,’ " says Plater-Zyberk.
“I suppose you could say that our towns are our babies.
Because it’s not just about the music, it’s about the vision.
And the continuous process of reinvention.
Describing Dylan is “like trying to talk about the pyramids,” U2’s Bono once said.
“People don’t understand that all that’s on the Internet is other people,” Dyson says.
The NIAID director responded not by having them arrested, but by inviting them in.
Since then, he has also devised treatments for several formerly fatal vascular diseases.
These days, Fauci’s institute is boosting the supply of smallpox vaccine and testing Ebola and anthrax vaccines.
“I don’t see retirement on the horizon,” he says.
“Why are you wasting your time on that?”
“Everyone knows that aging is mainly about cancer and vascular disease!”
But Finch was not swayed: “I had already convinced myself to the contrary.”
Finch revolutionized gerontology by showing that the aging process can be delayed.
But Folkman’s research silenced his critics.
Knowing how tumors supply themselves with blood, scientists now work on shutting down the supply.
‘What’s that?’
I asked, and he said: ‘You should always be of service.’
Fukuyama expanded his theory in the 1992 bestsellerThe End of History and the Last Man.
“Wherever there is Afro-American studies,” says a colleague, “there is Skip Gates.
“I didn’t think ‘Oh, my mother’s a writer.’
But in retrospect I realized that was an example.
She’d write so well.
We’d get all dressed up and go watch Mama read the minutes of the meetings.
It was like watching Toni Morrison read Beloved.
Architect Philip Johnson called it “the most important building of our time.”
Anything else would have been contrived.
- He defeated a plague once.
Now he faces it againD.A.
Surgeon General tapped employee Henderson to lead the effort.
“I declined,” recalls the physician.
“I wanted to discuss career options.
He told me, ‘This is your career option.’
" Henderson rose to the challenge, devising a strategy to surround and contain outbreaks.
Smallpox, which killed 2 million people in 1967, was wiped out by 1977. is one of history’s great leaders,” a doctor who participated in the initiative has said.
“We need to plan, not panic,” Henderson says.
“My clothes aren’t worn by bland people,” Kamali once joked.
The winner of numerous awards, she was added to New York’s Fashion Walk of Fame last year.
“The word for ‘old’ is really ‘experienced,’ " she explains.
“Technology gives us the ability to live longer, healthier lives.
We can focus on a philosophical objectivethe dreamand making the fantasy real.”
