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Telephone Interview with Victor Ambros, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2024

October 2024

Victor Ambros: Hello?

Adam Smith: Hello, am I speaking with Victor Ambros?

Victor Ambros: You are. Morning!

Adam Smith: Good morning. Very early morning, I know. Many congratulations on the news!

Victor Ambros: Well, thank you. Sorry that my phone was in the other room this morning, so I didn’t hear any earlier calls.

Adam Smith: Not…not at all…

Victor Ambros: Thank you. 

Adam Smith: I mean, you haven’t yet spoken with Thomas Perlmann from the Nobel Committee, I guess?

Victor Ambros: No, I have not.

Adam Smith: Did you actually receive the news by being called by a journalist?

Victor Ambros: I received the news by being called by my son! Yeah, a journalist called my son. Right, and so my son called.

Adam Smith: That’s a nice call to make to your dad.

Victor Ambros: I bet, yeah!

Adam Smith: It must all be a bit bewildering, getting the news just as it’s all breaking, so everybody is all trying to reach you. But if I can ask, what are your initial thoughts?

Victor Ambros: Well, I mean, my initial thought was great surprise because I had understood the prize to my good friends Craig Mello and Andy Fire for RNAi, I considered that to be an appropriate prize which encompassed microRNAs. So I had kind of put the idea aside, although people from time to time do mention, you know, “Oh, you might win a Nobel Prize,” but I always dismissed that as, you know, “No, no, no, it’s OK. It’s all been covered, and appropriately,” you know.

Adam Smith: Well, this is also the fourth Nobel Prize for the nematode.

Victor Ambros: Yeah, and that gives me incredible pride, you know, and the fact that Ruvkun is, the other awardee, is incredible, because Gary is such a good friend. Yeah, I mean you ask me what my first sense was, it’s surprise. And secondly, of course, it’s a kind of muted joy because, you know, whenever this kind of thing happens to basic scientists, especially scientists working on the nematode, it’s… I think it’s a wonderful thing for everybody doing this kind of work. We see it as a, in a way, as a celebration not really of the particular scientist in this case, but of the way of doing science, you know. Curiosity-driven, genetic studies of a complicated phenomenon and what you hope is you’ll learn a little bit more about how the phenomenon works – 

Adam Smith: Yeah. 

Victor Ambros: And it’s always amazing when the findings are new enough to be of interest broadly.

Adam Smith: And I wondered whether that ability to be on the lookout for new phenomena and really take them seriously and investigate them – that’s a special art – is it something that you think was a particular benefit of having worked with, for instance, David Baltimore for your PhD, Bob Horvitz for your Postdoc? Did that train you in the art of looking for the unexpected?

Victor Ambros: Yes, yes, very much so. I mean I was fortunate enough to work with a series of fantastic scientists, Bob and David, and before that, I worked with a postdoc named Edward Gruberg, and Gruberg was a fantastic mentor and really got me alerted to the fact that you can find out new things doing sort of routine experiments, you know. And he also taught me how to read the literature and therefore train myself, you know, to be aware of what’s known and what’s not known, so that you can notice what’s new.

Adam Smith: It’s also a celebration of the versatility of RNA this prize, isn’t it, I mean, yet again, something unexpected?

Victor Ambros: Yeah, that’s actually very exciting to consider that, yeah, you made a really good point. I just got back from a meeting in Ottawa, which is a meeting of the Riboclub, and there was over 500 people there, and they celebrated the formation of RNA Canada, which is the nationwide network of scientists and others promoting research around RNA, or else, agriculture, climate change and so forth. We all know that RNA is fascinating and incredibly versatile. It was… the whole meeting was kind of like a celebration of RNA, especially when I went to the posters, there was poster sessions with young people doing incredibly diverse amount of… you know, kinds of work.

Adam Smith: I guess today… today will help to boost that message then. I long to know what your son actually said to you when he called you?

Victor Ambros: (to someone off the phone) Hey Candy, what did Greg say? “Have you been getting calls from Sweden? You should answer the phone,” he said.

Adam Smith: That’s nice! OK, well, thank you very much indeed, and once again, congratulations.

Victor Ambros: All right, OK, bye-bye. 

Adam Smith: Bye. 

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