What Successful Scientists Can Learn From the Nobel Prize Winners
Discover the key skills and mindsets that separate successful scientists from true leaders in their fields
What separates a successful scientist from a leading scientist?
The latest Nobel Prize in Medicine offers surprising clues, revealing the crucial skills that propel researchers to the forefront of their fields.
The 2025 Nobel prize in Medicine or Physiology was awarded to three people for their research that advanced our understanding of immune tolerance.
There are a few things that successful scientists can learn from this Nobel Prize.
Communicating complex biology
Hats off to the Nobel Prize Committee for delivering an outstanding explanation of immune tolerance and its importance.
They used clear analogies and visual aids to explain complex cellular interactions.
At first the subject matter induced a bit of angst as it brought back my struggles to make sense of immunology lectures when I was in medical school.
The take away here is that they present the topic in complete detail without watering it down. They achieve this by taking their time, following a logical flow and having simple clear to understand slides with minimal text.
This is a skill that is increasingly important for scientists who want to become leaders in their field. Not only should you communicate to the public, you also have to explain your work to other disciplines who seemingly speak an entirely different language.
Persistence
As you watch the video you see that Shimon Sakaguchi spent decades pursuing a finding. Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell then worked diligently to characterize 20 genes to find the mutation in a type of mouse with an autoimmune disorder. It was the twentieth gene that provided the answer.
When you review a lot of researchers’ lists of publications they can seem to jump from topic to topic. In my experience leaders in their field have spent a substantial amount of their time pursuing a set of questions or trying to find the explanation for an unexpected finding.
They also do not seem to be worried about racing to make a finding. They know that their care and approach to dissecting a question and understanding mechanisms, means that if someone else makes a finding before them they will just go deeper.
This is exactly what Sakaguchi did after Brunkow and Ramsdell identified the Foxp3 gene. He went on to show that the Foxp3 was essential for regulatory T-cells.
Agency
Agency in a short and simple sense is the ability to do whatever it takes. For all three of these researchers it is clear that they have a high degree of agency.
This might involve learning a new skill, seeking out unconventional collaborations, or dedicating extra time to research despite setbacks.
Agency comes from having a reason to solve the problems that are in front of you.
This could be because you are afflicted by a problem and therefore highly motivated.
Or it could be that you are fixated on a vision, and work to pursue that goal no matter what it takes.
One thing that is in common however, is that you have to be willing to give up the comfort of a predictable future.
Pursuing routine research, writing routine papers is predictable. Publish enough and you will advance.
The three of their lives changed today. They are now Nobel Laureates.
Even thought that is great and perhaps the dream of all researchers, it creates an unpredictable future for them.
Fear of uncertainty can subconsciously sabotage our potential.
People with a high degree of agency do not let uncertainty get in the way.
The Future of Medicine & The Adjacent Possible
When I was in medical school a lot of the immune system was a black box.
As we develop more and more knowledge about the immune system it becomes more and more relevant to many different disease domains.
Coupled with the ability to engineer cells and to create gene therapies a modifiable immune system is the emerging future of medicine.
This means two things.
Learn about the immune system and the technologies to engineer ways to modify it
Position your research for this emerging trend.
To maximize your potential for groundbreaking discoveries, align your research with emerging trends that bridge different fields. This puts you in what Stuart Kauffman calls the ‘adjacent possible’ the space where the next big innovations are most likely to arise.
Here is a great book if you want to learn more about the adjacent possible: At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity.
The adjacent possible is where breakthroughs happen.
Conclusion
This is the inaugural post of The Successful Scientist’s Substack.
While as a successful scientist you cannot hope to receive the Nobel Prize you can learn a lot about becoming a leader in your field through the stories behind Nobel Prize winnings.
I have spent the last 18 years working with hundreds of successful scientists many of them leaders in their field. As far as I know none of them have received a Nobel prize.
Nonetheless there is a lot we can learn together about becoming a leader in your field.
Subscribe below if you would like to join me on this journey to understand how successful scientists become leaders in their field.