Biology is special that way, [with real success often arriving in mid- or even late-career, after a few false starts and fruitless sidetracks]. It takes years for people to get a feeling for the organism—for how nature actually works. Young people come in all the time knowing a bunch of fancy math. They say, ‘What if it’s like this computational model, this physical problem?’ They’re terrific ideas, but they’re wrong. Nothing works the way you think it should.