Oliver Smithies, the 2007 Nobel Laureate in physiology and medicine, spoke to an audience of about 100 people as part of the Thomas Jefferson Scholars Distinguished Lecture Series Tuesday in the Talley Student Union. 

Smithies, who is currently the Witherspoon Eminent Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, addressed the audience about his 60-year career in science from his undergraduate years to the present. 

Smithies discussed the importance of sharing personal research with other scientists in order to collaborate and make progress in one’s own work. 

“If you share your work, you have so much more enjoyment with what you’re doing,” Smithies said. 

Another topic Smithies talked about how science education can be progressed by today’s young scientists. 

“I think the best way to increase science education is to get young people interested in who and how the major discoveries were made,” Smithies said. 

Smithies began his research career in his undergraduate at Oxford University. 

In his graduate years, Smithies worked mainly on a thesis for osmotic pressures of protein mixtures. Smithies said this research was not very useful to his future career in science, but through researching, he learned how to do good science. 

“In order to be successful with one’s research, one must enjoy what he or she is doing, and this is what will make the work worthwhile,” Smithies said. 

When Smithies first started looking for work in Toronto after his graduate years, a friend of his, David Scott, informed him about the benefits of beginning research with insulin, according to Smithies. 

Smithies started with this research for a few years and eventually drifted into working with molecular sieving electrophoresis. This work landed him the Canadian Gairdner International Award in 1990. 

“The electrophoresis time was a very exciting time for me,” Smithies said. “You found new things almost every day.” 

Smithies then started doing genetic research and made discoveries working with haptoglobin types along with Norma Ford Walker in 1995. 

Af ter figuring out that starch gel could be used as a tool for electrophoresis, Smithies and Walker could then determine how people could be classified into three different haptoglobin types. 

Smithies made the starch gel discovery after remembering how starch turned to gel while watching his mother do laundry. 

“You never know where your inspiration will come from,” Smithies said. “You have to use your imagination.” 

Smithies then went on to work with homologous recombination. He researched the insertion of DNA sequences into human chromosomal β-globin locus. This type of gene targeting allowed Smithies to create diseases, such as cystic fibrosis in lab animals such as mice, in order to test for drugs and cures for such diseases. Smithies earned the Nobel Prize for his work. 

Smithies is currently working on research with citrate gold. 

Smithies said he enjoys participating in his hobby, f lying airplanes, as well as being a flying instructor. He wrote and published a work called “Overcoming Fear with Knowledge,” which is about how he believes one can overcome fear by being knowledgeable. 

“I think it went incredibly well,” Dana Moeller, the president of the Thomas Jefferson Scholars. “I think people enjoyed listening to him and thought he was funny and entertaining. I think we learned a lot from him and his advice from being a scientist for 60 years.” 

The Thomas Jef ferson Scholars received an endowment to fund events such as this, and to have distinguished lecture series where we invited influential guests to come and talk to the N.C. State community, Moeller said.