Eric Betzig once walked away from science altogether. Years later, he and his best friend put $25,000 each of their own money into building a microscope on a living room floor, and it won him the Nobel Prize.

In this episode, Méline sits down with Eric in his office. Eric is a physicist, a winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, and a Professor at UC Berkeley. He talks about his years at Bell Labs, the frustration that led him to quit, and the glowing jellyfish protein that pulled him back. He tells the story of building PALM with Harald Hess, a microscope that can see beyond the limit of light. He also explains why he believes biology is stuck. Life, he argues, can only be understood by watching it live, and we now have more imaging data than any human can interpret. The next breakthrough will need AI that can think in five dimensions.

This is a conversation about curiosity, hard work and failure, and the biggest mystery in nature.

He explains:
◼ Why we understand neutron stars better than what is happening inside our own cells
◼ How a microscope built on a living room floor led to a Nobel Prize
◼ Why AI drug discovery based on protein sequences alone will get nowhere
◼ What 5D imaging means and why we need AI that can think in five dimensions
◼ What Bell Labs got right about small teams, hard work and limited resources
◼ Why he believes prizes are corrosive to science

0:00 Intro
1:25 How Apollo and Star Trek Led Him to Science
2:00 The Limit Every Microscope Has Faced for Centuries
4:05 Why He Quit Science
4:59 Inside Bell Labs, the Legendary Lab of the Last Century
7:29 Why Small Teams Beat Big Ones
10:12 Price’s Law and Who Really Does the Work
12:04 Why Prizes Are Corrosive to Science
13:22 Harald Hess and the 4am Race to the Car Park
16:00 What Harald Taught Him About Humility
19:37 Out of Work and Out of Science
22:42 The Glowing Jellyfish That Changed Everything
27:50 The Scientist Who Funded His Work by Selling Ties
29:41 The Idea Behind PALM
32:26 Building a Microscope on a Living Room Floor
33:06 2005, the Most Miraculous Year of His Life
35:44 What 3D, 4D and 5D Imaging Really Mean
36:44 Why Biology Is on the Wrong Foot
42:41 Why We Need AI That Can Think in 5D
45:27 Why AI Investors Are Not Listening
47:31 Why Physics Has Stalled and Biology Has Not
49:06 Advice for Young Scientists
49:37 Why Science Has Grown Too Big
53:29 How AI Will Accelerate Everything
54:51 The Biggest Mystery in Nature
55:27 The One Habit That Matters Most

◼ Eric Betzig, UC Berkeley:
https://physics.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/eric-betzig