诺贝尔化学奖得主：异想天开很重要

    化学家罗德•霍夫曼获得过诺贝尔奖，但他的成功之路并不平坦。他生于波兰，从纳粹集中营里死里逃生。他12岁时到达美国，就读于纽约著名的史岱文森高中（Stuyvesant High School），然后是哥伦比亚大学（Columbia）和哈佛大学（Harvard）。

    霍夫曼在1981年荣获诺贝尔化学奖时年仅44岁，但他此后并没有不思进取，坐享清福。这位75岁的科学家至今已经指导了超过200名研究生、博士和博士后，还在康奈尔大学（Cornell）教授化学入门，同时与人合作剧本，发表诗歌。每个月的第二个星期天，他还在纽约的科妮莉亚街咖啡馆（Cornelia Street cafe）协助主持一个兼顾科学与表演的沙龙。他最近接受了《财富》杂志的采访，讨论领导能力、分子和提倡大胆想法的心路历程。以下是经过剪辑的对话稿。

    《财富》：您的研究工作可以看作是一门生意，你是不是也是这么看的？

    罗德•霍夫曼：是的，你可以对我的工作做一个投入-产出的经济学分析。我的成果包括560篇论文和不计其数的报告和其它事项，但论文是最重要的成果。我的业务就是提出想法，没有专利、版权或是别的什么考虑。有趣吧？投入就是每年20万到30万美元的研究经费，用于雇员和合作者的开支，产出就是560篇科学论文。

     这是不是有点像做生意，得要点管理技巧？

    在科学领域，我们发表的所有论文几乎都是和其它研究小组合作的产品。而在研究小组内部，我们也合作得很好。

    告诉人们，组里某人提出的想法不好或不对时，要注意方式。首先，即使是批评，也要让那个人有机会进一步证明自己的想法。但更重要的是，不要让他们从此信心全无，再也不敢提出新想法。

    有时很难把握分寸。管理学院或许可以教授一些心理技巧。通过这些技巧可以培育一个环境，让人勇于提出大胆的想法。

     科学界对研究资金的竞争非常激烈。在这种情况下，您如何保持进取心，发表了那么多论文？

    没错，竞争的确激烈。但我首先得说，尽管这个说法在科学界并不受欢迎，我觉得就资金来源而言，和艺术及人文学科相比，理工科还是幸福得多。因为我对两个世界都有所了解。国家艺术基金会（National Endowment for the Arts）的总预算不过是康奈尔大学在理工科领域所得到的政府研究及支持资金的一半。

    不过金钱并不是我们的研究动力。从某种意义上说，我们加入了这个让人着迷、而又永无止境的奇妙事业，事业的目的是获取关于宇宙和我们自身的可靠知识。这种动力从年轻时开始，直到现在也没有衰退，一直让人乐在其中。

    有些化学家也会名利双收，对吧？

    是的，不过开公司的人一般都是发现了某种催化剂或者药物。那些领域曾经有过很多有趣、但让人心碎的故事，某人从一个精彩的点子出发，开办公司。然后自然而然地就考虑上市，就有风投参与（毕竟我们在做《财富》的访谈），最早的投资者（此处指科学家——译注）就被排挤出公司的运营，最终完全失去自己的公司。

    但很多人在商业化产品的时候还保持着单纯的热情，但如果他们太过纠结于自己的研究，也可能会导致心理问题。我敢肯定读者们也听说过这类故事。

    在商业界，这样的事数不胜数。但在科学领域，单纯地了解世界依然还是主流。

    认识世界，或者创造世界。我的一部分研究工作就是去预测在地球上此前并不存在的分子，实在有趣得紧，我希望有人能制造出那些分子。但我认为创造出新分子的科学家和化学家应该担心那些分子的用途，可能有人会将之用于不当用途。我觉得他们对这个问题的重视还不够。造物有种天然的道德责任，不管是生小孩、制造分子，还是制造武器。

    Nobel-prize winning chemist Roald Hoffmann has had anything but a simple path to success. He was born in Poland, and survived the Nazi labor camps. He came to America at the age of 12, attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in New York, then Columbia, then Harvard.

    Hoffmann received a Nobel in Chemistry in 1981 at the age of 44, but certainly didn't rest on his laurels. The 75-year-old scientist has advised over 200 graduate students, Ph.D.s, and postdocs, taught introductory chemistry at Cornell, co-authored plays, and published poetry. Currently, he helps run a science and performance event on the second Sunday of every month at the Cornelia Street cafe in New York. He recently talked to Fortune about leadership, molecules, and the psychology of enabling crazy ideas. Here is an edited transcript of the conversation.

    Fortune: You can think of your work as a kind of business, can you not?

    Roald Hoffmann: Yes, so you can do an economic input-output analysis of what I do. Our product is 560 scientific papers plus countless talks and other things, but really the papers. I am in the business of making ideas and they're not patentable nor copy-writable nor anything. Interesting. Input is perhaps $200,000 - $300,000 per-year of research funds to employees and co-workers and the output is 560 scientific papers.

    And that requires some of the management skills you see in business?

    In science, almost all the papers we publish are written together with several people in research groups. But within that research group, somehow, we have mastered the ethics of collaboration.

    There's something about the way that the group leader tells people that an idea made by one of the other people in the group is not good or not right. The criticism is made in a way which allows the person, first of all, to come up with further evidence, but more importantly, doesn't shake them so that they're afraid of making another idea.

    It is a fine line. And probably in management school, one tries to teach the psychological skills by which you create a situation where people aren't afraid to come out with crazy ideas.

    How do you stay motivated to produce those papers, given that the funding in the science world is so cutthroat?

    Well, it is competitive. But first let me say, in an unpopular view in my own community, I think scientists are filthy rich in terms of funds compared to the arts and humanities. It's because I move in both worlds. The total budget for the National Endowment for the Arts is one half of what Cornell gets from the government in terms of research and support for science and engineering.

    But where do we get the energy for research? It is in part that we enter this remarkably addictive, self-propagating, wonderful enterprise of gaining reliable knowledge about the universe around us and within us. It begins in youth and still goes on -- it's fun.

    And that research can be lucrative for some chemists, right?

    Yes, but the people who are more likely to start a company are the ones who discover a catalyst or a possible pharmaceutical. There is a precedent for exploiting some of those things with very interesting and heartbreaking stories of someone starting a company based on a wonderful idea. Then, the natural course is to move toward an IPO, and as venture capital comes in -- now we're on Fortune ground -- the initial investors are squeezed out of the running of the company and eventually lose it.

    But a lot of them carry over to the commercialization of a product the same single-mindedness about some idea that could conceivably lead to disaster psychologically, if they're too close to what they're studying. I'm sure there are many more stories your readers can tell of such situations.

    In business, certainly. But in science, there is something to be said for simply learning more about the world.

    Or creating a world. Something I do as part of my work is predict molecules that weren't on Earth before, and that's lots of fun, and I hope that somebody else will make them. But I think that scientists and chemists who make new molecules should worry about the potential use and misuse by others of the molecules they make. I don't think they worry enough. Creation brings with it ethical responsibility, whether it's a child or a molecule or a gun.