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After nine years at Bell labs, I decided to leave that warm, cozyivory towerfor what I considered to be the “real world,” a university. Bell Labs, to quote what was said about Mary Poppins, was “practically perfect in every way,” but I wanted to leave behind something more than scientific articles. I wanted to teach and I wanted to give birth to my own set of scientific children.
在贝尔实验室待了9年后，我决定离开这个温暖舒适的象牙塔，走进我眼中的“真实世界”——大学。我对贝尔实验室的看法，可以引用玛丽·波平斯的话，“实际上十全十美”。但是，我想为世界留下更多东西，而不只是科学论文。我要去教书，培育我自己在科学上的后代。
Ted Geballe, a friend and distinguished colleague of mine at Stanford, went from Berkeley to Bell Labs to Stanford years earlier, described our motives best, and I quote:
我在斯坦福大学有一个好友兼杰出同事泰德·格贝拉。他也是从伯克利分校去了贝尔实验室，几年前又离开贝尔实验室去了斯坦福大学。他对我们的动机做出了最佳描述：
“The best part of working at a university is the students. They come in fresh,enthusiastic, open to ideas,unscarredby the battles of life. They don’t realize it, but they’re therecipientsof the best our society can offer. If a mind is ever free to be creative, that’s the time. They come in believing textbooks areauthoritative, but eventually they figure out that textbooks and professors don’t know everything, and then they start to think on their own. And then, I began learning from them.”
“在大学工作，最大的优点就是能和学生们在一起。他们生机勃勃，充满热情，思想自由，还没被生活的重压改变。虽然他们自己没有意识到，但是他们是这个社会中你能找到的最佳接受者。如果生命中只有一段时间是思想自由且充满创造力，那么那段时间就是在大学期间。进校时，学生们对课本上的一字一句毫不怀疑，渐渐地，他们发现课本和教授并不是无所不知的，于是他们开始独立思考。从那时起，就是我开始向他们学习了。”
My students, post doctoral fellows, and the young researchers who worked with me at Bell Labs, Stanford, and Berkeley have beenextraordinary. Over 30 former group members are now professors, many at the best research institutions in the world, including Harvard. I have learned much from them. Even now, in rare moments on weekends, the remaining members of mybiophysicsgroup meet with me in theetherworld ofcyberspace.
我在贝尔实验室、斯坦福大学和伯克利大学教过的学生、带过的博士后、合作过的年轻同事都非常优秀。他们中有30多人现在已经是教授了。他们所在的研究机构有不少是世界第一流的，其中就包括哈佛大学。我从他们身上学到了很多东西。即使现在，我周末偶尔还会上网，和还在从事生物物理学的研究组成员在网络世界里相聚。
