On September 14th, Aaron Ciechanover, the 2004 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, a member of the Israel academy of sciences and a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences, gave a lecture “Why Protein Keeps Dying in our Body—from Mechanism to Human Disease and Pharmaceutical Research” at Wuhan University’s 49th Luojia Forum.
“Do you know why I think about China on my birthday? Because my birthday and Chinese National day fall on the same day.” Ciechanover humorously began his speech, livening up the lecture room.
Ciechanover emphasized the importance of aligning interests and work in his speech. “I enjoy conducting chemical research because I am exposed to the beauty of natural science. You should learn self-study and find what you really want to research. Why can I win the prize? Compared with the big city, I like the desert better. Only in this way can I discover new things that belong to me. If you have not found anything, you need to deal with it because doing scientific research is a lonely journey full of unknown failures.”
After the speech, Ciechanover received warm applause for his wonderful answers to student questions.
Aaron Ciechanover is a distinguished research professor in the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion). He was awarded a doctor’s degree in biochemistry by the Technion in 1981 and has published about 200 academic papers in journals such as Science, Nature and Cell, etc. As among the first group Nobel Prize winners in Israel, Ciechanover has played a significant role in the development of science and technology in Israel.
