Abstract
In 2019, Nobel Laureate Edmond Fischer talked with Marc Pachter about his childhood, his career and the beauty of science.
Highlights of the interview:
10:40 Childhood dream of finding a cure for TBC
12:15 Young Eddy Fischer and childhood friend convert an attic into a makeshift laboratory
22:35 Eddy Fischer and his friend are offered a summer internship for medical students: ““For us it was paradise, to such an extent that we couldn’t see the black clouds on the horizon””
26:19 Edmond Fischer enrolled in the University of Geneva in 1939 “I was in Switzerland in World War II. We felt guilty that we couldn’t fight a war that had to be fought.”
29:40 “The music story is a funny one” Edmond Fischer on being a pianist and the Geneva Conservatory of Music
38:22 PhD thesis with Kurt Meyer and work on alpha-amelyase
44:07 “I went by accident” Edmond Fischer wants to go to the US to work in biochemistry
48:37 Fischer arrives in the US at the begin of McCarthyism: Though he might have to leave, because the US "is going the way Germany or Italy under Mussolini went”.
52:00 Relationship with Ed Krebs and the development of their Nobel Prize-awarded project on phosphorylation
58:15 Edmond Fischer on the the beauty of science: “You always know where you start from, you never know where you end up.”
1:07:40 Edmond Fischer on his love for the Lindau Meetings and what excites him
1:14:00 Edmond Fischer on his first invitation to the Lindau Meetings – and a plane encounter with George Wald
