An Interview with Alejandro Zaffaroni

Wolfson: What about your family, your parents? Were they interested in the same things you were? Were they educated?
Zaffaroni: It was a sad situation, because my mother died when I was 12. My father died when I was 17. I had this intense experience over the period when I was 12 to 17, because I was the youngest and became the closest companion to my father.

There was one thing that was very interesting about my father. Although I was not a very good student - I was just passing my grades - he was never impatient. He allowed me to define my own life.

I used to go with him to the symphony, the opera, and I began to get some understanding of other aspects of learning, cultural aspects. There was one thing that was very interesting about my father. Although I was not a very good student - I was just passing my grades - he was never impatient. He allowed me to define my own life. He gave me freedom, even at that younger age. There was no push, no demands, just confidence that I would find a way to make it.

Wolfson: This is a somewhat common story among innovators. You weren't a particularly outstanding student, then suddenly... What turned you around?
Zaffaroni: I discovered education once I discovered chemistry. It seemed like my brain was made for that. From then on, it just flourished.

I was the first person to leave my little country of Uruguay to come to the United States to get a doctorate in biochemistry. That was in 1945. My enthusiasm was so great that I wanted to go all the way.

Singh: You said that your father didn't push much, he allowed you to find your own path. Do you think that's important to the creative spirit, to becoming an innovator, being able to find your own path?
Zaffaroni: I think even broader: it's important in order to become a person. It is tremendously important for the relationship between the child and the parents to be one of respect.

You cannot expect that a father or mother will be respected by the child if they do not respect the child. This concept of discipline is a misunderstanding. Each child is a different person. There is no formula, so you have to come from instinct to really understand the situation of the individual child.

Singh: Where do you think that youth of today should set their goals? What do you think they should shoot for tomorrow?
Zaffaroni: You have to be in the pursuit of a process that is going to be giving you satisfaction. I think it is wrong to put as a goal 'I want to be a millionaire.' It's a stupid goal, because millionaires are not any better or worse that anybody else. In fact, the more resources you have, many times, the more difficult life becomes. We have too much of these pressures in our society for everyone to be rich rather than to be happy.

If a person feels that the most attractive thing is to sit down and write poems, that is what he should do, write poems. And if that is what gives you the greatest satisfaction in life, that is what you do. Then you find whatever else you need to do to make a living, so that you are self-supported.

You have to have goals that are reachable goals, and to know that as you move forward into your life, you are moving on into goals that are more and more important to you - not to society - but to you personally. If a person feels that the most attractive thing is to sit down and write poems, that is what he should do, write poems. And if that is what gives you the greatest satisfaction in life, that is what you do. Then you find whatever else you need to do to make a living, so that you are self-supported.

After that, whatever else happens is purely accidental. It's a stupid issue this business of going after three cars, because if you own three cars or just a bicycle doesn't change whether or not you are a satisfied person. That comes from other things - your family, the satisfaction in the use of your mind, in the use of your body, in being part of the community. That is the key to success. I could have been an equally happy person being a professor or a teacher in school.

Wolfson: Could you further address your idea on the importance of living a balanced life. In industries where the technology is moving so quickly, there is a lot of pressure on young employees to work incredible hours, to give up a lot of what would normally be considered a balanced life, or else they don't 'make it' in the company.
Zaffaroni: I believe that the amount of hours that you work are not the most important contribution. The brightest people who have made major contributions are not necessarily the ones who have been working 50 or 60 hours a week.

But there is a certain rule or expectation that young people ought to be working very intensely. It begins with the universities; we expect graduate students to work like crazy. Post-doc you have to work like crazy. So that is where it begins and then they move on into biotech.

There is a difference between the biotech new industry and thepharmaceutical companies. In the pharmaceutical companies, your rewards are your salary, perhaps a little bit of a share in stock options. It is 9 to 5, then you go home to do whatever you want to.

In the biotech field, there is much more pressure. But the fact is, this is a choice for the individual as to where he wants to go. He could stay in the university, he could go to biotech, he could work in a pharmaceutical company. There is not a single path.

Some individuals are so taken by the work they do, whether they are painting, writing, or being in the lab, they've got to do it 60 hours a week. It is just the pleasure of what they are doing. They haven't found a balance between that and the pleasure of their home, raising a family, and what have you.