-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Martin S Hirsch, The Joys of Research and Mentorship: Personal Observations Over Six Decades, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 228, Issue 8, 15 October 2023, Pages 975–978, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiad139
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
Serendipity played a major role in my career. Until the summer after my first year of medical school in 1960, I had no idea what a physician-scientist did and no real interest in doing research. That all changed during a summer project designed by a faculty member (Donald Walker) in the Department of Anatomy at Johns Hopkins, when I cultured parathyroid explants on autologous bone slices from osteopetrotic mice and showed that the explants induced migration of bone osteoclasts to the site of the explant, suggesting that the defect in these mice lay in their bones rather than in their parathyroids [1]. I was thrilled to make this minor discovery as well as to describe and publish the observations. For the first time, I could say to myself that I contributed, albeit minimally, to an advance in human knowledge and, perhaps sometime in the future, to improvements in human health.
