Interviewee: Walter Gilbert. Walter Gilbert talks about his feelings regarding the insulin project and science in general. (DNAi Location: Manipulation > Production > Players > Walter Gilbert > The highs and lows of science)

In the several years we did, worked on the insulin, there were periods in which there's total discouragement, there's periods in which the other laboratory gets ahead and you learn they're ahead and they publish a paper and you have to decide do I want to continue working on this project or work on other things. We're pursuing a number of lines that don't work out as well as a number of lines that finally do work out. When the final results come in, or when you finally see that you've made a particular breakthrough, it's a period of extremely intense excitement, and that excitement that's really coupled with the moments of discovery is a wonderful pleasure. And one of the reasons that one does science is for that, the excitement, both of discovery and actually more generally the excitement of new ideas.

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