fascination
山中伸弥さんと共同受賞したガードン博士の若き日に関する記事です。
本日の新聞各社に掲載されている記事もそうですが，こうした評伝は読んで刺激になりますし，自分にとっての励みにもなります。
fascinated, fascinationともにありふれたことばですが，Websterをみると，"to transfix and hold spellbound by an irresistible power"との定義があり，さらにbewitchという意味も昔はあったとあります。なるへそ，何だか分からない力に導かれ引き込まれるのが，fascinateの核だということが分かりました。
閑話休題。今日は学生のリクエストによりサバティカルにもかかわらず来年度のゼミ説明を行ってきました。予想に反した数の希望者が集まり，selectionは必至ですが，彼らが英語にどのくらいfascinateされているのかをしっかり見極める必要がありそうです。（UG）
Teacher tried to dissuade Nobel winner Gurdon from science
Gurdon is fond of recalling that when he was 15, a tutor wrote in his school report that it would be a "total waste of time" if he followed a career in biology "and this whole idea should be immediately discouraged."
He has said he keeps the report above his desk "for my amusement."
His mother, though, had spotted that he was fascinated by the subject. "Even at school I used to grow thousands of caterpillars to make moths, to the intense annoyance of my tutor," Gurdon said in an interview several years ago.
"But I had a fascination for these things, and I think it was really she particularly who enabled me to switch from my education, which was completely nonscientific, into a scientific direction."
When it came to choose a career, his father wanted him to go into the army or banking.
"Fortunately for me, I was refused entry to the army for the national service, a piece of good luck," he recalled. "I was actually a competitive squash player at the time and rather fit, but the family doctor decided I was not suitable for the army and diagnosed my slight cold as bronchitis, and that eliminated any possibility, thank heavens, of entering the army as a career," he said.
He managed to win a place at Oxford University. His first intention had been to study classics, but the admissions tutor said he would grant him a place providing it was not in that subject. His postdoctorate thesis was on nuclear transplantation, the subject that has obsessed him throughout his career.
In 1971, he moved to Oxford's great rival, Cambridge, and in 1989 Gurdon started the prestigious Wellcome/CRC institute at the university.
